amused
janetmiles pointed me to the following excerpt, which originally appeared on the blog Making Light.John Barnes, on the difference between political participation and writing novels:
The habits of mind required for a novelist are antithetical to those required for political participation. A hard-working, competent politician will open a can of worms only as a last resort, and then try to discard the bad worms, make the good worms line up straight, and ultimately put all the good worms back into a better can. A fiction writer who is serious about writing good fiction will open the same can just for the hell of it, with a joyous shout of "Wow! Cool! Worms!" in order to play with the worms, show the worms to friends, give the worms names, dress the worms up in costumes, attempt to interview the worms, and perhaps try to become a worm. Naturally the can is thrown away at once, because the worms need room to tangle and copulate and make more worms; if the worms are to be put into anything, it will be something more interesting than a can, perhaps a flower pot, bathtub, or gravy boat.
I have some interesting observations about this...
1) Worms do not actually belong in cans. They belong in flowerpots, gardens, and other locations full of moist organic matter. (My grandfather once left an actual can of worms, leftovers from fishing, in the fridgidaire for a while. They decayed into a reeking goo, and my grandmother had some colorful things to say about that.) In my observation, many social problems are caused by canning worms, and could be solved if the worms were removed from the can and placed in a vermiculture bin or a compost heap. Taking things out of context is a reliable way to cause problems.
2) The more one opens cans and plays with worms, the better one gets at understanding worms. My fiction-writing style is very much along the lines of "Wow! Cool! Worms!" especially in regards to social dilemmas. I enjoy opening a lot of cans that most people would pay money to have sealed away in concrete. But I find that I often look at the news and say, "Hm, there goes a worm. It looks like the kind from can #32A. Ah, there's the can! And it says #32A on the front." Sometimes I then have further insights on what could be done about that particular problem. Other times, I wonder if the solution my characters tried would work with these worms. Occasionally it's even possible to attempt copying a fictional solution -- and some of them do work out. The main thing, though, is just learning to think outside the can.
August 27 2007, 22:10:05 UTC 13 years ago
August 27 2007, 22:17:18 UTC 13 years ago
I have the weirdest craft ideas...
August 27 2007, 22:22:37 UTC 13 years ago
You know.... there ARE Barbies for that.....
August 27 2007, 22:37:16 UTC 13 years ago
http://www.worthlink.net/~ysabet/misc/rbarb.html
August 27 2007, 22:47:25 UTC 13 years ago