#IWSG: Take an Interest in Things

~ J.S. Pailly

Hello, friends.  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Natalie Aguirre, Kim Lajevardi, Debs Carey, Gwen Gardner, Patricia Josephine, and Rebecca Douglass.  If you’re a writer and if you feel insecure about your writing life, click here to learn more about this amazingly supportive group.

Friends, last month my grandmother passed away.  She was 103 years old.  She spent most of her professional life working for the United States Department of State, and she was peripherally involved in many of the ups and downs of the Cold War.  That is a period of time which includes the Moon Landings, and I am in proud possession of several poster-size photographs of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing which “went missing” during my grandmother’s time working for the government.

My grandmother was also an avid reader, and she encouraged me to be an avid reader, too.  At a time in my life when school really pushed the idea that only certain books counted as “real reading,” my grandmother encouraged me to read anything and everything I wanted.  She promised to buy me any book I asked for, and so, even though she didn’t personally care for science fiction, she bought me many of the Star Trek and Star Wars novels I read as a kid when I was supposed to be reading actual homework.

And in my teenage years, when I started writing my own Sci-Fi stories, my grandmother became my first editor.  She corrected my spelling and grammar, and she asked interesting questions about my characters and the weird Sci-Fi worlds they inhabited (all this, again, despite the fact that she didn’t personally care for science fiction).

My grandmother lived a fascinating life.  I don’t know all the details.  She said something to me once implying that some details of her life might actually be national secrets, and to this day I have no idea whether or not she was joking.  But I do remember, quite vividly, what she would say whenever someone asked her about her incredible life: “Oh, I just take an interest in things.”

Obviously I met other people who worked for the State Department when I was growing up.  You’d think everyone at the State Department would know a lot about the world, but they didn’t.  My grandmother was unique.  She knew more about the world than anyone else I’ve ever met, and it’s all because she just took an interest in things—all sorts of things—even things that may not have seemed like they were worth knowing about, at first glance.

So my writing advice this month is this: take an interest in things, as my grandmother did.  Take an interest in all sorts of things, even things that don’t seem particularly interesting or important, at first.  Whether you are protecting America’s foreign policy interests or writing your next awesome story, you never know what little tidbits of knowledge might end up mattering.

24 thoughts on “#IWSG: Take an Interest in Things”

  2. Sorry for your loss. She sounds like a fascinating person.

    Taking an interest in things can lead to interesting and unexpected places. After reading the original Foundation trilogy again, I read through some sections of Asimov’s autobiography. Interestingly, his Foundation series, often regarded as the greatest in science fiction, came as a result of his interest in history, an interest he tried to move past when he decided to become a chemist, but one that still led him to read Gibbons’ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire twice. It’s hard to see Foundation happening from someone who was only interested in natural science.

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  4. Very sorry for your loss. She sounds incredible. My parents were like her in encouraging me to read anything and getting me tons of books. (Even though my mom didn’t like science fiction.) Considering where she worked, I bet she did know some secrets.

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  5. James, your grandmother sounds absolutely wonderful and remarkable. My sympathies to you on her loss, for it is surely great. As a friend of mine says: may her memory be a blessing to you. And her sentiment and advice for you to take an interest is just the best. I shall pass that encouragement on to my grandchildren in her honour if I may.

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  10. I’m sorry about your grandmother passing away. It sounds she lived a good long life. 103! That’s super! You must be proud to have a grandmother who was highly inquisitive and knowledgeable and who influenced you in your love for reading and supported your writing of science fiction.

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