Ornoth

Sigh. The predictability hurts us.

What was your biggest accomplishment this year?

Probably the thing I’m most proud of is succeeding at raising $3,555 for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute through my participation in this year’s Pan-Mass Challenge ride. Other noteworthy accomplishments include biking up several hills, including Evans Notch, Great Blue Hill, Mount Wachusett, South Uncanoonuc, and Pack Monadnock; the progress I’ve made getting back into writing for DargonZine; and my exploration of Buddhism.
 

What was your biggest disappointment?

Oddly, the PMC also provides my biggest disappointment of the year, when I crashed out of the event and had to go to the hospital to get stitches. My other cycling disappointment was bonking hard on the way back from a ride to Gloucester. I was also disappointed in that I only had enough submissions to send out five issues of DargonZine this year, and we lost several of our veteran writers and my close personal friends, including Victor, Pam, Bryan, Stu, and Rhonda.
 

What do you hope the new year brings?

The obvious and biggest desire is a new job. Other than that, I hope that the DargonZine crew can finish up the big story arc we began writing at the 2003 Summit, so that I have it to print this year.
 

Will you be making any New Year's resolutions? If yes, what will they be?

I don’t think so. I just finished making two birthday resolutions (regular Buddhist meditation, and transitioning to skim milk), so I don’t think I need additional resolutions. Maybe I’ll eat a little less red meat, since that would probably be the next logical step in improving my diet, but I don’t think that’s big enough to make it a resolution.
 
I will say that I find it disappointing that although people always ask what new resolutions you’re making, they absolutely never ask how well you kept your old ones. As someone with some actual strength of will, I find it sad that most people fail to control themselves and honor their commitments. I think I’ve kept all my resolutions for the past three years (and they haven’t been “gimmes” at all).
 

What are your plans for New Year's Eve?

I was thinking maybe I’d go to the Lizard Lounge to see Flynn, but probably I’ll stay home. I haven’t bothered cultivating many friends, and I’m so not the party type.

How are you planning to spend the summer [winter]?

This summer’s goals are finish up a couple stories I’m writing for DargonZine, finding a new job, and training for and completing my third Pan-Mass Challenge, a 200-mile charity bike ride to benefit cancer research and treatment. If you’re interested in helping me reach my fundraising goal, either email me or go here.
 

What was your first summer job?

When I was about fifteen I began working as a counselor at a YMCA day camp. My first year, I think I was paid $25. Later, I’d have my marriage ceremony at the same lakeside camp.
 

If you could go anywhere this summer [winter], where would you go?

Probably Scotland. I’d really like to have more time to explore the countryside.
 

What was your worst vacation ever?

I’m not sure it qualifies as a “vacation”, but the celebration at the end of the Staples project was the most dismal that I recall. The consultancy we worked at gave us a comp day, but it the weather was raw, windy, and rain-sodden. I spent more than two hours on a bus with my coworkers, some of whom were fine and some of whom were the kind of people you’d pay money to avoid. We were dumped off on a sleazy patch of slag near the ocean, and left for two or three hours to freeze in the rainstorm (yes, the bus left). When the bus finally returned to pick us up, someone had the wonderful idea that we could really cap this celebration off by going to a theater and all watching the tedious and formulaic X-Men movie before our two-hour bus ride home. Looking back on it, it was thoroughly painful and disheartening, and a truly pathetic way for our employer to thank us for the months of long hours the project had required.
 

What was your best vacation ever?

I’d have to say it was last year’s Scotland Dargon Writers’ Summit. Twelve days driving around the country, sightseeing, accompanied by some of my closest friends.

I thought I'd share an edited version of a posting I sent to my DargonZine writers.

I recently read an article on A List Apart, a Web designer site, whose angle was on improving how people write. It was specifically addressed to people who write weblogs, but it might be interesting for you to peruse. The article is http://www.alistapart.com/stories/writebetter/.

However, there was one suggestion in there that was a bold statement that I thought I'd bring up. It goes like this:

The advice “write only what you know” increases the likelihood that you will know the same things forever.

Now, I'm a big proponent of "write what you know", because those are the only things that you're going to have unique and revealling insights about. Furthermore, that understanding is what permits you to create interesting, plausible details and imagery about things you know. For me, being a good writer means being an astute and insightful observer of the world around you, and sharing those observations in your writing. How can you ever convincingly write a mangrove swamp or a three-masted schooner if you've never observed them for yourself? How can you plausibly write a character of the opposite gender, if you've never been inside one's head? My answer is: you probably can't do it credibly, and you certainly can't do it compellingly.

A meager substitute for direct observation is, of course, research. But I see that as changing the "what you know" side of the equation. Research is how we can succeed at writing about things that we know nothing about. But it's not the same quality as direct personal experience and observation. Research can allow you write about an unfamiliar topic credibly, though probably not compellingly.

And for me, the whole pithy saying (about never learning anything new because you write what's familiar) breaks down when you realize that writing is most definitely not the primary way any of us learns about the world. I can still "write what I know" without stagnating, because most of what I know, I learned not through writing about it, but through living, observing, and experiencing it in my real life.

So my corollary would be something like this: Writing what you don't know, without trying to fully "know" it, only demonstrates to others the limitations of your knowledge.

I know there are folks who take a less conservative view of "writing only what you know", but I thought I'd share, nonetheless. For me, my writing is heavily based on sharing my unique insights and observations with the reader, so writing beyond what you know is doomed to mediocrity at best.