Quills and Needles

I have a whole post about the differences in hobbies/crafts I participate in up in my head somewhere, it'll probably get posted when I start being disciplined as a blog writer. :P One thing, though, that strikes me as interesting—there's so often the assumption that the particular hobby being discussed is the only one you have. My writing acquaintances often talk about 'write every day', 'don't complain about not having time,' etc. Same from drawing people; similar stuff from photography people, even though that hobby is more business oriented (at least in my circle of people, which admittedly focuses on model photography.) Even knitting people often talk about knitting All The Times, although this is the hobby that seems least isolated; I know lots of knitters who also crochet, weave, spin, etc.

(I'm not saying everyone in the hobby does this/has no other hobbies/ etc, it's more of a general impression based on my experiences and social circle.)

It gets me to wondering: do most people only have one or two hobbies? I have this impression that they do, but, um, clearly I do not. I pick up a new hobby every 1-2 years, on average. (In addition to the ones I've mentioned here, I also sew, play video games, and ride horses. I plan to learn to spin, weave, dye, and learn to shoot films at some vague point in the future.) I don't watch TV much—when would I have the time? :)

Anyway, if you have a hobby or two or several, post them here? It will be a very unscientific poll. And do your hobbies have the impression of being an exclusive hobby or are they full of multi-hobbied people?

 Creating isn't about inspiration or spilling your guts. Creating isn't about being wildly free. Creating isn't tortured, isn't genius, isn't mystical. When it comes to writing, creating is actually a lot more like woodworking or farming or making a beautiful piece of jewelry. It takes extraordinary focus, attention, and acres of time.
The Power of Not-Knowing

As someone who's involves in multiple crafts-of-creation, I LOVE this quote. Romantic ideas of creation are nice, but ignore all the work that goes into it. The most "wildly free" craft I do is photography, and even that comes down to "move the light a few inches closer," and hours of editing afterward. Work isn't romantic, but it's what makes the good stuff happen.

I'm not very good at blogging, but I guess since mostly no one is listening anyway, that doesn't matter.

On Authorial Trust
Apparently I don't trust authors/narrators to tell the truth anymore unless stuff happens on-screen, or its effects do. For example, I just finished Suzanne Collins's MOCKINGJAY (very mild spoilers ahead). And there were several times when I didn't believe that something the narrator was told or was experiencing was genuine. For example, the main character gets informed that another character is dead, and my immediate reaction is, "No, zie isn't dead, she didn't see it happen. Zie'll come back." Partially this is because I like that character and don't want zie to be dead, and partially because I've had storytellers pull that before and have characters return (Jim Gordon in THE DARK KNIGHT, for example.) The mian character later experiences a rather dreamlike state in response to a particular event, and half-consciously experiences the aftermath—but it wasn't what I wanted her to do, and I didn't put it out of the author's ability to mislead, so I didn't believe it was real for several paragraphs.

And I guess my point is, I don't know that I'm wrong, but I certainly wasn't reading these things as the author intended. My guesses were never correct when I didn't believe the author, and it just got my hopes up. It's interesting how authors and narrators used to be completely reliable, that was what was expected, but a shift in modern writing to unreliable narrators—I do it too—means that it's a whole 'nother trick entirely to pull off "reliable" without encountering suspicion. My suspicion, anyway.

A Harvest
This is what I pulled out of the garden today—sans many many green beans and several carrots that I could have plucked but was too lazy to, I'll get to them tomorrow.



It might be hard to see, but there is a large-ish green pepper, one medium tomato, several cherry tomatoes, and three raspberries. This is not really an average daily harvest... average would be somewhere between this and a shitton. Usually we get more medium-ish tomatoes (we have several different varieties) and of course, if I'd bothered to get the beans and carrots, it would have been larger. I wish our raspberries were fruiting, though; the three I pulled today are "ours" by virtue of the neighbor's raspberries hang over the fence. (And he totally said we could take those.)

Hmm. Maybe I should have gotten some carrots, I'm craving them now.