David Patneaude's Blog: Different Worlds - Posts Tagged "dirt-bikes"
The Writer's Curse
One curse of being a writer is the temptation to read other writers' stuff and analyze the hell out of it. Instead of simply enjoying a story, doing that old suspension-of-disbelief thing, you tend to look at its bones--the style, techniques, methods, theme. You isolate the pieces--context, characters, conflict, choices, changes. You look at the balancing act of show versus tell, the word choice, the figurative language, the point of view, the tense, the authenticity of dialogue. You note the amount of research that must've been involved.
But in a way all of that can be a blessing, too. Because when you read something really good, and it transports you into that suspension-of-disbelief zone despite your critical leanings, you KNOW it's good. And when you do peek below for a glimpse at the underpinnings of the story, you appreciate what the author has done, the work that's gone into it.
DIRT BIKES, DRONES, AND OTHER WAYS TO FLY is one of those books. Conrad Wesselhoeft doesn't live in rural New Mexico. He isn't seventeen. He isn't trying to figure out seventeen-year-old girls. He doesn't converse regularly with seventeen-year-old friends or members of a national security team. He doesn't fly drones over Pakistan. He isn't a world champion gamer. He doesn't spend hours riding a dirt bike through the desert or jumping it from suicidal heights or diving from airplanes. He's not a kid dealing with the death of a parent and a sister's terminal illness and a shattered family.
But he makes you believe all these things. Which is the mark of a writer who's done the work and the homework. The research. The writing. The revising. He's done the teamwork thing--listening to critique, listening to your agent, listening to your editor.
I appreciated everything Conrad accomplished in DIRT BIKES. But more importantly, I ENJOYED it.
But in a way all of that can be a blessing, too. Because when you read something really good, and it transports you into that suspension-of-disbelief zone despite your critical leanings, you KNOW it's good. And when you do peek below for a glimpse at the underpinnings of the story, you appreciate what the author has done, the work that's gone into it.
DIRT BIKES, DRONES, AND OTHER WAYS TO FLY is one of those books. Conrad Wesselhoeft doesn't live in rural New Mexico. He isn't seventeen. He isn't trying to figure out seventeen-year-old girls. He doesn't converse regularly with seventeen-year-old friends or members of a national security team. He doesn't fly drones over Pakistan. He isn't a world champion gamer. He doesn't spend hours riding a dirt bike through the desert or jumping it from suicidal heights or diving from airplanes. He's not a kid dealing with the death of a parent and a sister's terminal illness and a shattered family.
But he makes you believe all these things. Which is the mark of a writer who's done the work and the homework. The research. The writing. The revising. He's done the teamwork thing--listening to critique, listening to your agent, listening to your editor.
I appreciated everything Conrad accomplished in DIRT BIKES. But more importantly, I ENJOYED it.
