{"id":3151,"date":"2024-01-03T06:07:55","date_gmt":"2024-01-03T14:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=3151"},"modified":"2024-01-02T18:12:05","modified_gmt":"2024-01-03T02:12:05","slug":"the-things-i-know-the-things-you-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2024\/01\/03\/the-things-i-know-the-things-you-know\/","title":{"rendered":"The Things I Know, The Things You Know"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared a while back on my own blog.<\/em><\/p>\n

Many writers (I won\u2019t say all writers, because I don\u2019t know them all, but at this point I think I have a pretty decent random sample) know a bunch of different weird things. \u00a0Many writers (see above caveat) were probably the sorts of kids who stored up random factoids, or had deep pools of info about odd things, or could list all the kings of England from Edward the Confessor onward (that used to be one of my parlor tricks, along with reciting the Prologue of the Canterbury Tales). \u00a0Many writers research science, or history, or Alexandrian mythology, or sanitation in ancient China, or, or, or\u2026<\/p>\n

The thing is, if you\u2019re the kind of person who picks up spare facts the way other people nab pocket change, it will sooner or later burble to the top of your consciousness. \u00a0My husband, the Gray Eminence of rec.arts.music.beatles, can reliably identify which out-take from which bootleg two bars of a given Beatles song is from, and probably knows all sorts of arcane info about who was recording that day, and can expound at length about the cool fill Ringo was using, or why George was using that<\/em> guitar or\u2026 \u00a0I, who have only the laywoman\u2019s hey-I-was-there-when-the-Beatles-were-cool-the-first-time appreciation of the music, can still enjoy Danny\u2019s over the top minutiae. \u00a0And when I need an in-house set of professional ears, I have it. \u00a0Your friends and beloveds are fonts of all sorts of information, if you only think to ask. \u00a0And if they don\u2019t know, someone among them will almost certainly know someone who will<\/em> know.<\/p>\n

Mumbly-years ago I was writing a novel set in New York, in which our Hero had to go to Rikers\u2019 Island, the NYC jail complex that sits in the middle of the East River. \u00a0First thing I learned was the difference between a jail and a prison (jails are short term, prisons long term, for one thing, and are generally run by local law enforcement\u2013sheriffs and police departments; prisons are state- or Federally-run, and are for people who are in for more than 365 days). \u00a0Second thing I learned was that, at the time at least, it was very hard indeed to find out logistical facts about the prison (how do you get there? is the protocol different for lawyers and visitors? what\u2019s the layout of the place). \u00a0Now, of course, there\u2019s a website<\/a>\u00a0for directions, with information on the various facilities<\/a>, and so on, but in these long-ago days, not so much. \u00a0So I asked a friend\u2019s husband, the only lawyer I knew, if he knew any of this stuff. \u00a0He didn\u2019t, but a friend did, and after an hour of fascinating conversation I knew more about Rikers\u2019 Island than I\u2019d thought possible. \u00a0Thus: the power of friends and their friends.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m a member of a list called Joys of Research<\/em>, which is a stunningly valuable focused-crowd-sourcing tool: it\u2019s simply a bunch of writers who have different areas of expertise. \u00a0Ask about medieval latrine technology or the decomposition rates of bodies or the weight of an 1795 flintlock pistol and someone<\/em> will know. \u00a0And if no one knows, they\u2019ll have suggestions about where to find the information. \u00a0Just being able to narrow the informational sources down a little is often a huge help when you\u2019re time-crunched.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not organized enough to make a list of who of the people I know I can ask for what, but you might be. \u00a0And an added benefit? You get to know people better. \u00a0I am hampered by shyness and an early inculcation of the goofy notion that asking people questions was rude. \u00a0(I know. \u00a0I know.) \u00a0But asking questions about another person\u2019s interests is a wonderful way of deepening a friendship, especially if you\u2019re able to ask about things your friend is really interested in. \u00a0My friend Steve can talk mammalian biology until the cows come home (he might even know why<\/em> the cows come home). My friend Claire knows medieval history, my friend Kevin is a go-to for herbal information and cookery; my friend Ellen is a stunning well of mid-20th century American pop-culture. When I started working on Sold for Endless Rue<\/em> I discovered that my friend Tess, who had been the administrator of Clarion when I went there, knew tons about the literature of medieval medicine. \u00a0Connections FTW!<\/p>\n

And never forget that you might be the one who knows something someone else needs to know. \u00a0And that feels really good too: you get to be the pro from Dover and expound on something near and dear to your knowledge base too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared a while back on my own blog. Many writers (I won\u2019t say all writers, because I don\u2019t know them all, but at this point I think I have a pretty decent random sample) know a bunch of different weird things. \u00a0Many writers (see above caveat) were probably the sorts of kids […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3151"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3155,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3151\/revisions\/3155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}