Are You Obsessed?

I’ve always had obsessions. Some idea or project or subject will suddenly loom large in my mind and I can’t stop thinking about it. For a while, anyway.

For some reason I’ve always thought that if the obsession wasn’t going to last I should quell it as much as possible. Obsessions do pass (although some are recurring) and it seemed wasteful to pour so much time and energy into something I’d have moved on from in a few weeks’ time.

In my youth (all right, even now) I enjoyed completing questionnaires which purported to tell you something about yourself, whether serious (Myers-Briggs) or not (What Punctuation Mark Are You?*).

It was after completing one of the never-occasionally-sometimes-often-always variety that I realised I had only one ‘always’: when you are interested in something, do you want to read up on it?
Yes. Frequently more than I want to actually do the thing itself, which seems silly but saves a great deal of investment in short-lived fads.

I’ve had obsessions of various lengths with millinery, embroidery, steampunk, jesters, historical costuming and various periods of history including the fall of Tsarist Russia, Anglo-Saxon England, the Regency era and the social history of World War II – among other things.
And it all goes into the files for later, although as Kristen Lamb points out, writers tend to be ‘Masters of “Things Few Know and Fewer Care About”.’

I recall reading yet another book of self-understanding-through-classification which described people who collect information (this is me, I thought) showing their love for others by sharing bits of their collection with them. So to all who I have ever bored with random snippets of knowledge you never cared to know: I love you.

And then I came across this quote from Tamora Pierce: “The best way to prepare to have ideas when you need them is to listen to and encourage your obsessions.”
The relief! The validation! Importantly, not only can obsessions be useful to the writing life, but it isn’t just me. It’s lots of us. It could even be you.
So how do you tell if you have acquired a Writer’s Obsession? A questionnaire, of course 😀

1) Are you lying awake dreaming about it? (1 point per hour spent.)
2) Are you lying asleep dreaming about it? (2 points per dream.)
3) Do you have three or more library books on the subject at once? (1 point per book; double points if you bought them.)

Is this you?

4) Have you read all the books the library has on the subject, leaving you prowling the aisles in a frustrated search for more? (Two points; three if it’s a large library or you have access to interloans.)
5) Do you keep bringing it into conversations where it may or may not belong? (1 point per conversation.)
6) Are you marshalling your resources of spare time days ahead in order to maximise obsession-time? (1 point per day ahead multiplied by: 1 if you’re calculating in hours; 2 by half hours; 3 by 10-15 minutes.)
7) Do you trawl the internet by the hour, looking for a) information and b) some poor sap who’s as obsessed as you are? (1/2 a point per hour spent, doubled if you should have been doing something else at the time; and don’t worry, we’re here.)

If you had to get a piece of paper and a pen (or take your socks off) to calculate your score, you have an obsession! What is it? Do tell! All correspondence welcomed!

*semi-colon

In Praise of Old Technologies

A bit of a oxymoron, I know, but in these days of planned obsolescence, last year’s technology can be dismissed as ‘old’.

Now, I’m no pitchfork-wielding Luddite demanding a return to the good old days before the Industrial Revolution. It would make it harder to have a blog, for a start. But I do think there is a case to be made for some of the old technologies.

Angry peasant mob

Take my sewing machine, for example. (Please don’t – I’m using it.) It was made soon after World War II by Japanese craftsmen, in an early example of the time-honoured principle of using someone else’s idea and selling more of it (the idea in this case being Mr Singer‘s).

It is largely composed of cast iron and weighs about as much as a moderately-sized child. I wouldn’t call it indestructible, but if I dropped it on the floor I’d be more worried about the floor than the machine.

Ceiling Hole

The best thing about it is how relationally-friendly it is. OK, the marketing guff on modern machines probably talks about how quiet they are instead (it’s a shorter word, to begin with), but the result is the same. And I’ll bet mine’s quieter. I can have it running at full speed (i.e. as fast as I can turn the handle) and still keep up an audible conversation. In a whisper.

Not to mention my machine is about as old as the oldest surviving member of my family, and is still in perfect working order. Look so good when you are sixty, you will not, o sewing machine of today!

iWaste

It isn’t just sewing machines. I’ve mentioned before that I write with a fountain pen (more than one, in fact). I wouldn’t give one to a five year old, perhaps, but once you’ve mastered the art of writing, using a fountain pen is not all that esoterically difficult. And it’s beautiful, fun, and better for the environment – same as the sewing machine.

And then there’s the candle-lamp with glass shade I inherited from my grandmother. No naked flames, so it’s fire-safe, but it provides enough light for me to read by. Again, there is no obsolescence, planned or otherwise. As long as they keep making machine needles, candles and ink, I’m set.

Reading By Lamplight

Of course, there are those who are all for the new and shiny and can’t imagine why someone would see value in the pre-penicillin era. Well, we’re rapidly approaching a post-penicillin era, so at least I’ll fit in.
And when the fossil fuels run out (or the price is more than most can afford), will my life be obsolete? No. I’ll be sewing, writing or reading, by the light of my candle-lamp – just as I do now.

What’s your favourite ‘old technology’ – or would you like to make a case for the new? If you’d like to make the argument for no technology at all, get off the internet, you hypocrite! That aside, all comments welcomed – have your say.