{"id":3334,"date":"2012-06-08T11:00:13","date_gmt":"2012-06-08T16:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=3334"},"modified":"2012-06-08T11:00:13","modified_gmt":"2012-06-08T16:00:13","slug":"people-you-know-are-a-well-of-knowledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=3334","title":{"rendered":"The People You Know are a Well of Knowledge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If my current hobbies end up informing my writing, it&#8217;s mostly on an accidental basis. For instance, I started out the last novel with the idea that I wanted to write a cyberpunk retelling of a fairy tale. That didn&#8217;t really happen, once the novel was edited to focus more on what it actually was. Instead, it turned out to be a sci-fi novel that was influenced by a lot of my thoughts on Internet culture and computer use.<\/p>\n<p>It makes sense; I pretty much live on my computer. I love the inside of it &#8212; I love the outside of it. I have a lot of feelings about it, and the way it shapes us as people. I don&#8217;t have nearly as many feelings about fairy tales.<\/p>\n<p>But you know whose hobbies I <em>do<\/em> like to use? Other people&#8217;s. All of my friends and family have interesting, varied hobbies (and lifestyles) that work as a knowledge base. Sure, I could Google information that&#8217;s relevant to my characters, but I would rather make a phone call or send off an email. For instance:<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>My father worked in the restaurant business for all his life.<\/li>\n<li>My mother was in the Air Force; one of my fathers-in-law<sup>2<\/sup> was in the Army. Speaking of him &#8212; he has an actual vault in his basement of antique guns and weaponry.<sup>1<\/sup><\/li>\n<li>One of my fathers-in-law<sup>2<\/sup> was a lawyer. He will tell you all about the sort of trials he worked, and the other lawyers he dealt with.<\/li>\n<li>My mother-in-law runs a farm<sup>3<\/sup> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedonovan.com\/the_farm\/\">a fiber studio<\/a>; she makes yarn. My mother <a href=\"http:\/\/www.treasuresmadefromyarn.com\/\">can make pretty much everything with yarn.<\/a><\/li>\n<li>My son&#8217;s godfather is a nurse and a medieval nut; he not only <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/50104685@N03\/\">owns a full suit of armor<\/a><sup>3<\/sup>, but he can also shape his own armor and talk medieval and fantasy weapons all day long.<\/li>\n<li>I know several different artists: my son&#8217;s godmother does <a href=\"http:\/\/www.veronicasveil.net\">medieval manuscript painting and henna<\/a>, while my best friend from college is a graphic artist.<\/li>\n<li>Two of my best friends from high school are in the military, and the other is a teacher.<\/li>\n<li>One of our friends has a degree in religious studies (or theory) and will answer pretty much any question on pagans, gypsies, and witches that she knows the answer to.<\/li>\n<li>Her girlfriend is a programmer-in-training (like my husband), who not only can answer those questions but also offer a different viewpoint. (Often more logical than mine.)<\/li>\n<li>My husband&#8217;s boyfriend is a writer too; we can sit and jaw about writing styles and storytelling. He can also tell stories about growing up with a vastly different childhood than my own.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That isn&#8217;t even the bulk of the people I know, not really. I have grandparents and cousins and friends about town. The writer&#8217;s group is about a dozen different people with different experiences: every single person on this blog has something they know a <em>ton<\/em> about. It also doesn&#8217;t account for the places my friends have lived and travelled; my husband can describe the red-light district in Amsterdam, my mother can talk about what Paris looked like in the mid-80s.<\/p>\n<p>Every single person I know has some sort of weird or unexpected hobby; some of them are the same hobby, but from a different viewpoint. They can all offer a more detailed and personal opinion than a Google search ever will. But more important for me: they offer hands-on, tactile, personal experience that I wouldn&#8217;t get if I didn&#8217;t know brilliant, nuanced individuals willing to share their experience so I can bastardize it for my writing.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Selection_018.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-3335\" src=\"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Selection_018-300x182.jpg\" alt=\"Two men in Armor\" width=\"300\" height=\"182\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/194278_10150148637857817_3570104_o.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/194278_10150148637857817_3570104_o-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"The outside of a personal gun vault.\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-3350\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/04.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/04-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Ann Warren Doing Henna\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-3352\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/6848786629_9a7176c9c9.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/6848786629_9a7176c9c9-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"Two SCA Dudes Fighting\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-3351\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>1.<\/strong> It&#8217;s a whole room &#8212; seriously, that image is just the <em>outside<\/em> of the vault. If I need to look at an old-school weapon, I can drive up to this dude&#8217;s house any time I want. So long as I bring the grandchild.<br \/>\n<strong>2.<\/strong> Both my fathers-in-law are <em>fantastic<\/em> storytellers, too, which means questions are usually answered not only to the letter of the question, but also the spirit.<br \/>\n<strong>3.<\/strong> She has chickens, goats, horses, angora rabbits, peacocks, turkeys, other birds &#8212; it&#8217;s wild. It took me years to get used to the fact that people live on a farm.<br \/>\n<strong>4.<\/strong> I always get this wrong, but I&#8217;m pretty sure it&#8217;s 14th century. I know it&#8217;s Italian cavalry armor; he has a lance rest and everything. And that&#8217;s not even his only suit &#8212; just his favorite.<br \/>\n<strong>5.<\/strong> Images used are either mine, or used with permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If my current hobbies end up informing my writing, it&#8217;s mostly on an accidental basis. For instance, I started out the last novel with the idea that I wanted to write a cyberpunk retelling of a fairy tale. That didn&#8217;t really happen, once the novel was edited to focus more on what it actually was. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[68,72,443,507,1233,1274],"class_list":["post-3334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-influence","tag-armor","tag-artists","tag-friends-a-resource","tag-henna","tag-weaponry","tag-writers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3334\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}