I’ve written about incorporating your hobbies into your work but recently have pondered the opportunities in directly writing on those interests. In much the same fashion as what I’m doing here, writing about your passion is fun. I’ll extend that to any pursuit. If you want to be a writer, filmmaker, painter, actor, etc. start with something you’re innately interested in.
The foremost benefit comes when you’re starting out being the drive to finish your first project. There is an endless graveyard of artistry abandoned due to a loss of interest. When the going gets tough and you didn’t care that much about the idea to begin with, that often seals it. How many children (at the behest of their parents) were made to play an instrument? My hands for one were not suited for a bowstring. I gave up the second I could since I’d no fondness for classical music at the time. If there’d been music I could play about cool animal facts or tanks I might have stuck with it longer. Sometimes the love of the art form develops over time. Getting familiar and overcoming the first couple hurdles may be enough.
The format need not be how I’m delivering. A simple journal to express your thoughts can get you started. If you want to start writing and you like music, detail your thoughts on a song or album. Over time you’ll develop the good habits of a writer in writing regularly, seeking new words, conveying ideas, and all the basics. Eventually you’ll get bored not of writing but the format and you’ll challenge yourself with a new one. That’s a good time to attempt a short story or novel themed around your hobby. It will likely be terrible as early works have no previous attempts to learn from but you’ll already become acclimated to that challenge.
I somewhat inadvertently followed this with my first novel constantly adding action scenes I’d cribbed from film and TV. More than anything I wanted to get to the next gunfight that played out in slow motion in my head. Can you blame a fifteen year old?
If I had to start over I’d write about liquor. Start up a journal to note the taste, then add the price I paid for each bottle on a value assessment, expand simple tasting notes (cherry, vanilla) to more specific descriptors (pecan sandies, lemon squares), the evaluations would lengthen, I’d include a short narrative of how I got the drink and what I was doing while enjoying it. Knowing my own youth I’d have been an arrogant know it all critic before reading over an early entry as part of a repeat tasting and accepting how repulsive I was. What defines the artist is the desire to create. From there my interest would have taken me to write a story about those delicious drinks. Owing to my legal studies it would’ve been a near direct (uninteresting) commentary on inducements as another target for complaints. But having been carried across the finish line, I could start over with any idea that crossed my mind.
I know now when I write a story and there’s whiskey it won’t just be described as “expensive” or “top shelf” like it once was. The trust fund kid is getting Clase Azul and the art expert wannabe takes Willett Pot Still. There’s “whiskey straight” and then there’s “That stranger staring through the counter’s wood grain with three fingers of OGD 114 in a shaky hand but for the glass.”
Colin Klawans 