On writing and light pollution....
Sep. 8th, 2007 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
concertigrossiI read an article today that really struck me, so I'm posting about it. I talk a little bit about how I write fiction and why I do the research the way I do. I just want to make sure that everyone realizes that I'm talking about what works for me. Mine is not the One True Way, and I'm wouldn't dream of criticizing anyone who does things differently. If there were ever a medium for YMMV, creative writing is it.
I am frequently accused – and usually, quite rightly – of aggravated nitpickery. It can be a real problem for my writing, if I get bogged down in stupid details, or if I deal with writer’s block by trying to nail down irrelevant historical facts. (Procrastinate much? Me?) But, when writing fiction, I find that I have to have a critical mass of petty details to even get anything out at all. (And if it’s not historical fiction, I have to write out the details myself. Ask me someday about the history of a particular semi-mystical NGO/secret society. I actually wrote out the major events for that organization’s past for the preceding 3,000 years.) I need to know these things to get the mindset so that I can go forward, and I rely on the petty details to provide me with the hooks on which to hang the action of the story. People don’t just come out having deep (plot-motivating) thoughts and conversations: they all lead out of something, and occasionally, that something can be pretty ordinary. Need a guy to have an epiphany about the mundane pleasures of the world? Bring on the mangoes. Do it right, and you can have a plot turn on an extra visiting card. There are some not-insignificant downsides to this method, but it works for me.
In my internet meanderings today, (Ah, the Internet. The Procrastinatrix’s best friend.) I found an article in the New Yorker dealing with light pollution in the modern sky. This hit me like a ton of bricks: the night sky used to be a lot brighter. A LOT brighter. I know, I think I knew this intellectually, and it ought to be obvious, but I hadn’t really REALLY thought about it before. Galileo needed a telescope to see that there were actually separate stars in the Milky Way. He had a fairly sissy telescope by today’s standards, but could see that there were mountains on the moon, that Jupiter has moons and that Saturn has rings. I have a hobbyist’s telescope here in my house, and I have never seen any of these things, outside of pictures.
Why do I bring this up here, in my writing journal? Because that article made me realize something: a bunch of guys on a ship in the middle of the ocean in the 18th century would have been looking up at something like this.
Which is like nothing I’ve ever seen with the naked eye before, though I’ve spent lots of time outside major cities, and have been known to stargaze at night with friends while camping. Will it be important for what I’m writing? Maybe. Maybe not. I do actually have some stargazing in the story, and telescopes are very handy for getting two people to stand *thisclose* to each other, so it could work, but I won’t force it.
It just makes me happy regardless.
And now I’m going to see if I can’t talk my husband into a trip to Natural Bridges National Monument. :)
I am frequently accused – and usually, quite rightly – of aggravated nitpickery. It can be a real problem for my writing, if I get bogged down in stupid details, or if I deal with writer’s block by trying to nail down irrelevant historical facts. (Procrastinate much? Me?) But, when writing fiction, I find that I have to have a critical mass of petty details to even get anything out at all. (And if it’s not historical fiction, I have to write out the details myself. Ask me someday about the history of a particular semi-mystical NGO/secret society. I actually wrote out the major events for that organization’s past for the preceding 3,000 years.) I need to know these things to get the mindset so that I can go forward, and I rely on the petty details to provide me with the hooks on which to hang the action of the story. People don’t just come out having deep (plot-motivating) thoughts and conversations: they all lead out of something, and occasionally, that something can be pretty ordinary. Need a guy to have an epiphany about the mundane pleasures of the world? Bring on the mangoes. Do it right, and you can have a plot turn on an extra visiting card. There are some not-insignificant downsides to this method, but it works for me.
In my internet meanderings today, (Ah, the Internet. The Procrastinatrix’s best friend.) I found an article in the New Yorker dealing with light pollution in the modern sky. This hit me like a ton of bricks: the night sky used to be a lot brighter. A LOT brighter. I know, I think I knew this intellectually, and it ought to be obvious, but I hadn’t really REALLY thought about it before. Galileo needed a telescope to see that there were actually separate stars in the Milky Way. He had a fairly sissy telescope by today’s standards, but could see that there were mountains on the moon, that Jupiter has moons and that Saturn has rings. I have a hobbyist’s telescope here in my house, and I have never seen any of these things, outside of pictures.
Why do I bring this up here, in my writing journal? Because that article made me realize something: a bunch of guys on a ship in the middle of the ocean in the 18th century would have been looking up at something like this.
Which is like nothing I’ve ever seen with the naked eye before, though I’ve spent lots of time outside major cities, and have been known to stargaze at night with friends while camping. Will it be important for what I’m writing? Maybe. Maybe not. I do actually have some stargazing in the story, and telescopes are very handy for getting two people to stand *thisclose* to each other, so it could work, but I won’t force it.
It just makes me happy regardless.
And now I’m going to see if I can’t talk my husband into a trip to Natural Bridges National Monument. :)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-09-09 05:36 am (UTC)I am absolutely with you in the school of writing via large amounts of detail. I spent a week constructing an entire alternate history of the Seven Years' War just for the benefit of a few offhand remarks and for the character history that's guiding the characterization but that will only ever exist in my head. Right now, I am reading a really tedious book from 1851 on all the details of court-martial procedure. I also need to know the names of the ships of all the captains even if I never mention them, and who all their commissioned and warrant officers are, and... It goes on and on. Most of it will never make it to the page and it really shouldn't! But it's fun. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-09 05:53 am (UTC)Perhaps we should form a support group? :)
(BTW, I haven't had a chance to read over your story, yet, and I may not get a chance to until Monday, but I will definitely get to it early in the week.)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-09 06:09 am (UTC)