I saw an interesting Tweet the other day (on Twitter, don’t you know, because the Muskrat can call it what he wants, but so can we). No, no, wait, I know what you’re thinking, but hear me out. Yes, I’m aware saying that a driblet of social media can be interesting appears to be both heavily ironic and an oxymoron. And yes, I’m perfectly aware most people asking questions on Twitter are doing it for the engagement stats, not out of any real interest in what their fellow humans are thinking. But…
This particular Tweet asked a question of writers --- at least putatively, I suppose, to see if we can establish any kind of causal link betwixt a writer and his/her sordid past. Many non-writer types (a distressingly large segment of the population, and judging by how people write these days, a segment rapidly growing in its illiterate approach to life) seem to think that writers must all have had traumatic childhoods, in order to provide the grist for all the angst going on in their stories. And… it ain’t so, folks. At least, not in my case. Sure, I had the usual childhood traumas, but nothing horrifically outstanding.
Anyway, the question was: were you encouraged to be creative when you were a child? Which seems just a tad disingenuous: nobody ever sat down with me and proclaimed that today, we were going to learn to be creative, so my answer to that would be well, not overtly. In fact, like most parents back in the Dark Ages when I was a kid, mine tended to be fairly… well, disengaged. I don’t mean to say they were negligent or unloving or anything like that. The implicit understanding was that it wasn’t their job to schedule my daily play, either solo or with friends. But most good parents learn pretty early on that if you want to get your kids to do various things, the roundabout way is often better than the straightforward didactic one. So there was a pretty good supply of what we would today call toys. And books. An endless supply of books, from the earliest age on.
The toys were designed to foster creativity. My absolute, all-time favourite was my Lego collection. Back when I was a boomerlet, Lego was… just blocks, in all sorts of shapes and sizes. There were no kits. Just blocks, blocks, and more blocks. (Rather like Sam describing the lembas situation to Frodo.) What you did with the blocks was up to you, which I think was hugely important and significant, because what it meant was that there were no constraints on a kid’s creativity. No one was dictating that this kit makes this model, and you assemble it like a jigsaw puzzle, and then you’re done. Okay, cast it aside and move on to the next piece of conspicuous consumption, kid!
So I built all kinds of things with my Lego. My younger sister had received some little plastic troll figurines for Christmas one year, and each figure was about an inch/couple of centimeters tall. Somehow, I discovered they fit almost perfectly into the objects I was designing and building. So ‘the trolls’ became the stars/action figures of our many games in these various creations. I built all kinds of stuff, some of it things thoroughly grounded in reality, like hospitals, some of it firmly in fantasy --- every Christmas I built a massive Santa Claus palace --- and some it straight from science fiction, like spaceships. We spent uncounted hours playing with them, creating various scenarios and acting them out.
And the books! As I said, my parents made sure there were lots and lots of books in the house, and long before I could read for myself, they read stories to me. (I still vividly recall racing through the front door of our house one day in grade one, yelling to my mother, ‘I can read! I can read!’) As a teacher many years later, I always used to tell parents that one of the best things they could do for their children was encourage them to read, to see the language in use.
I discovered science fiction around 1968 with Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and went hunting for SF books immediately thereafter. Shortly after that, I discovered fantasy when my mother gifted me a copy of The Hobbit, and the rest, as they say, is history. (I thoroughly agree with Wednesday Addam’s comment that ‘writing what you know’ is a hall pass for the imaginatively impaired. For goodness’ sake, folks, you’re writers. Imagine stuff. Including stuff you’ve never personally experienced. You can do it, Brucie!)
And of course, after reading stories, it was only a short leap to begin writing stories. I still have some of them, stretching all the way back to elementary years. I began writing longer stories in junior high, chiefly with me as the hero and whatever girl I was currently infatuated with as love interest. I’ll charitably allow that there’s… well, some embryonic talent in those writings… but I should probably include a clause in my will that they be burned once I’m gone. Since then, of course, I’d like to think my writing has improved by several orders of magnitude. Sure hope so, anyway. Nowadays, as Isaac Asimov famously said, I write for the same reason I breathe: because if I didn’t, I would die.
So I guess the simple answer to the Twit’s original question is… yeah, I suppose I was encouraged to be creative as a child. Because of my parents’ either knowing or unwitting actions.
Thank God.
This particular Tweet asked a question of writers --- at least putatively, I suppose, to see if we can establish any kind of causal link betwixt a writer and his/her sordid past. Many non-writer types (a distressingly large segment of the population, and judging by how people write these days, a segment rapidly growing in its illiterate approach to life) seem to think that writers must all have had traumatic childhoods, in order to provide the grist for all the angst going on in their stories. And… it ain’t so, folks. At least, not in my case. Sure, I had the usual childhood traumas, but nothing horrifically outstanding.
Anyway, the question was: were you encouraged to be creative when you were a child? Which seems just a tad disingenuous: nobody ever sat down with me and proclaimed that today, we were going to learn to be creative, so my answer to that would be well, not overtly. In fact, like most parents back in the Dark Ages when I was a kid, mine tended to be fairly… well, disengaged. I don’t mean to say they were negligent or unloving or anything like that. The implicit understanding was that it wasn’t their job to schedule my daily play, either solo or with friends. But most good parents learn pretty early on that if you want to get your kids to do various things, the roundabout way is often better than the straightforward didactic one. So there was a pretty good supply of what we would today call toys. And books. An endless supply of books, from the earliest age on.
The toys were designed to foster creativity. My absolute, all-time favourite was my Lego collection. Back when I was a boomerlet, Lego was… just blocks, in all sorts of shapes and sizes. There were no kits. Just blocks, blocks, and more blocks. (Rather like Sam describing the lembas situation to Frodo.) What you did with the blocks was up to you, which I think was hugely important and significant, because what it meant was that there were no constraints on a kid’s creativity. No one was dictating that this kit makes this model, and you assemble it like a jigsaw puzzle, and then you’re done. Okay, cast it aside and move on to the next piece of conspicuous consumption, kid!
So I built all kinds of things with my Lego. My younger sister had received some little plastic troll figurines for Christmas one year, and each figure was about an inch/couple of centimeters tall. Somehow, I discovered they fit almost perfectly into the objects I was designing and building. So ‘the trolls’ became the stars/action figures of our many games in these various creations. I built all kinds of stuff, some of it things thoroughly grounded in reality, like hospitals, some of it firmly in fantasy --- every Christmas I built a massive Santa Claus palace --- and some it straight from science fiction, like spaceships. We spent uncounted hours playing with them, creating various scenarios and acting them out.
And the books! As I said, my parents made sure there were lots and lots of books in the house, and long before I could read for myself, they read stories to me. (I still vividly recall racing through the front door of our house one day in grade one, yelling to my mother, ‘I can read! I can read!’) As a teacher many years later, I always used to tell parents that one of the best things they could do for their children was encourage them to read, to see the language in use.
I discovered science fiction around 1968 with Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and went hunting for SF books immediately thereafter. Shortly after that, I discovered fantasy when my mother gifted me a copy of The Hobbit, and the rest, as they say, is history. (I thoroughly agree with Wednesday Addam’s comment that ‘writing what you know’ is a hall pass for the imaginatively impaired. For goodness’ sake, folks, you’re writers. Imagine stuff. Including stuff you’ve never personally experienced. You can do it, Brucie!)
And of course, after reading stories, it was only a short leap to begin writing stories. I still have some of them, stretching all the way back to elementary years. I began writing longer stories in junior high, chiefly with me as the hero and whatever girl I was currently infatuated with as love interest. I’ll charitably allow that there’s… well, some embryonic talent in those writings… but I should probably include a clause in my will that they be burned once I’m gone. Since then, of course, I’d like to think my writing has improved by several orders of magnitude. Sure hope so, anyway. Nowadays, as Isaac Asimov famously said, I write for the same reason I breathe: because if I didn’t, I would die.
So I guess the simple answer to the Twit’s original question is… yeah, I suppose I was encouraged to be creative as a child. Because of my parents’ either knowing or unwitting actions.
Thank God.
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