Blog Post Number 49 Written: 07-25-2021 Uploaded : 03-10-2023
I grew up with animals. Not just dogs and cats like everyone else, or fish, or ferrets. I mean we had those as pets while I was growing up, but we also had livestock. Chickens, cows, horses, and lots of goats. By lots I literally mean hundreds.
I know this, small town, two stoplights no internet while growing up kinda thing, riding bicycles miles to friends and girls’ houses was the kinda thing that belongs in the 80s, not the 2000-2015 time frame I experienced it. But this goes back to my point of having adventures and life experiences in order to better write about adventures and life experiences. I had to dig trenches, and build sheds, Deliver babies, help mend bones, rescue the trapped and chase off the mischievous. I saw their personalities, they may not have been human, they may not have been able to speak, but I spent enough time with them you learned their personalities, the silent one that wouldn’t take any guff, the ones too persistent and clever for their own good. Those that got sick, or what they would do when they got loose, some would simply sit under a tree, some would climb the tree, or eat the tree, or climb on your cars or break into the shed and eat themselves to death in the grain stores.
Those experiences, those personalities and characteristics so understandable, relatable, and sometimes even social despite not being human or being able to speak, now that I am looking back on it objectively, that was a heck of an experience. That kind of stuff, I think is helpful as a science fiction author. To try and describe something different, inhuman, but of reasonable personality, intellect and sociability can be an advantage when trying to make something alien, something wholly inhuman be relatable and understandable to us as humans and readers.
This goes back to my philosophy of having experience in order to write and better describe other experiences and the experience of others. So while I often complain about all the work and labor I had to do, Like everything else I have had to do, it sucked, then but makes a great story now. I had to do it but I learned from it, and those experiences have helped me, as a person, as a writer.
I guess the point of the rant, in this case, is to tell you, or anyone who wants to write, to do things, to have experiences, to become more of a person, and use that to become more of a writer.
Chace Randolph 