Drew Faraday's Blog - Posts Tagged "musings"

Growing up in a family with storytelling as the coin of the realm was wonderful but perplexing. I just assumed it held sway in every other family too, so the first few times I sat through dinner at a friend's house with only a few niceties being traded I was stunned. My friends were even more stunned when they joined my family since by the time the meal started, a handful of stories were already taking shape & vying for center stage.

To my knowledge, no one in my family ever wrote down anything other than personal letters before I showed up, but oh, could they swap stories. That's one thing I came to especially appreciate—the swapping part. Sure, some tried valiantly to control the narrative for longer than the story had punch, but they nearly always experienced epic failure since it was well understood in my family that anybody could start their own story off to the side at any time & drift back & forth between versions at will. In some ways, we were like jazz musicians improvising & playing off each other, constantly innovating & embellishing.

To a modern ear, those stories might seem rustic, mundane, pedestrian at best. But to my young ears, they were pure magic.

I still remember being teleported into the hold of a transatlantic ship when Gram told stories of her father nearly dying as a kid, into the midst of the Battle of Iwo Jima when my aunt described the horror through the eyes of her twenty-year-old grandfather, onto the Oregon Trail while listening to my uncle's rendering of an ancestor's letter about surviving a harrowing trip to the Willamette Valley, as well as countless others.

So it wasn't at all surprising to me when a first-person narrator took center stage in Pearl Fields and the Oregon Meltdown as an homage to those wonderful storytellers from my past.

Till next time,

Drew
Drew Faraday
Pearl Fields and the Oregon Meltdown

Some days I really don't mind working on the business side of this self-publishing adventure of mine—all right, to be clear, it's more like I don't resent it as much as I do most of the time. It's just not something that draws me in, know what I mean? If you're a puzzler or chess player, you're no doubt aware of how mind-numbing your hobby can be to some. If you're on the opposite end of the spectrum & need an adrenaline rush just to lure you off the couch, you're probably also aware of how tedious it can be to somebody to hear about your latest harrowing experience while they're contemplating the dirty dishes piling up in the kitchen sink or the unfulfilled promises lingering in the air.

This morning I'm not in the mood for anything approaching a puzzler day or a ski-slope adventure day.

I just want to write. Don't care what—something that's been rattling around in my head for a bit; something I've forgotten about till I delve into my journal & notes; something that materializes by the time I finish the end of this sentence.

But I have business to attend to, a deadline to face, a festering heap of reminders to check off.

Hey, that might be a decent title for a story of some sort. A Festering Heap . . . it's got a ring to it, don't you think?

Till next time,

Drew

Drew Faraday
Pearl Fields and the Oregon Meltdown