CT: Apartment Hunting
So lately I've been apartment hunting. Here in Los Angeles, but also in other cities I love. Seattle. New York. Prague. London. I've been looking at cheap, reasonable apartments and multi-million dollar penthouses. Even some houses.
When I find a house that I like, then I jump on Ikea (or something like that) and furnish it. I furnish the hell out of it. I pick themes for rooms and think through how I would live in each of those rooms. Honestly, given an afternoon at Ikea and an unlimited budget I could make the coolest home.
Am I moving? No. I love my place. For now at least, I'm also really really happy living in LA. I mean, someday I'd love to live in those cities for a while, but that's at least a few years off. But since I was a little kid, I've loved to look at houses and imagine my life there.
It took me a long time to realize that I'm not just daydreaming when I'm doing this. I mean, yes, there's definitely an element of daydreaming, especially when I'm looking at four story homes in the best part of London. I'm an artist, we daydream. Except that in these moments what I'm also doing is writing.
I've learned that sometimes when my imagination takes off, a lot of the time what I'm really doing is developing characters. I'm building the homes they live in, I'm deciding what they do, I'm creating their day-to-day lives.
I used to try to stop daydreaming so much. I thought it was hindering me, or at the very least it was a distraction from my ability to get things done during the day. But in the last few years, I've decided to treat it as a form of passively writing. Rather than stopping myself when I start to drift off on a mental tangent, I just start taking notes. So much of writing, especially the fantasy/sci-fi writing that Caitlin and I do, is asking "What if?". What if we developed functional robot artificial intelligence (Isaac Asimov)? What if historians could travel back to the time they're studying (Connie Willis)? What if? What if?
So as a writer, I'm learning to listen to my instincts. To let my mind wander productively as Caitlin and I create characters and worlds. I never really know where my mind will take me. And as we define a character, daydreaming about their lives will only help Cait and I fill in the details and make them more rounded.
As Cait and I start getting ready for WonderCon this year, we're trying to give ourselves the tools not only to do some networking and meeting of other writers, but also to use the experience to grow creatively. To give our imaginations more tools that we can use to create and tell stories.
Happy Apartment Hunting,
CT
When I find a house that I like, then I jump on Ikea (or something like that) and furnish it. I furnish the hell out of it. I pick themes for rooms and think through how I would live in each of those rooms. Honestly, given an afternoon at Ikea and an unlimited budget I could make the coolest home.
Am I moving? No. I love my place. For now at least, I'm also really really happy living in LA. I mean, someday I'd love to live in those cities for a while, but that's at least a few years off. But since I was a little kid, I've loved to look at houses and imagine my life there.
It took me a long time to realize that I'm not just daydreaming when I'm doing this. I mean, yes, there's definitely an element of daydreaming, especially when I'm looking at four story homes in the best part of London. I'm an artist, we daydream. Except that in these moments what I'm also doing is writing.
I've learned that sometimes when my imagination takes off, a lot of the time what I'm really doing is developing characters. I'm building the homes they live in, I'm deciding what they do, I'm creating their day-to-day lives.
I used to try to stop daydreaming so much. I thought it was hindering me, or at the very least it was a distraction from my ability to get things done during the day. But in the last few years, I've decided to treat it as a form of passively writing. Rather than stopping myself when I start to drift off on a mental tangent, I just start taking notes. So much of writing, especially the fantasy/sci-fi writing that Caitlin and I do, is asking "What if?". What if we developed functional robot artificial intelligence (Isaac Asimov)? What if historians could travel back to the time they're studying (Connie Willis)? What if? What if?
So as a writer, I'm learning to listen to my instincts. To let my mind wander productively as Caitlin and I create characters and worlds. I never really know where my mind will take me. And as we define a character, daydreaming about their lives will only help Cait and I fill in the details and make them more rounded.
As Cait and I start getting ready for WonderCon this year, we're trying to give ourselves the tools not only to do some networking and meeting of other writers, but also to use the experience to grow creatively. To give our imaginations more tools that we can use to create and tell stories.
Happy Apartment Hunting,
CT
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