Interview meme
Aug. 25th, 2006 02:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altarielThursday. Sometime earlier in the century, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fictualities asked me five questions for the interview meme. Being net-less gave me the opportunity to finish them up.
1. In any of the longer stories/novels you've written, what's the moment when you felt that you knew something about one of the main characters that you didn't know before?
Two moments, writing A Game of Chess. Firstly, when Faramir first presented me with PTSD. This made me go much more deeply into World War 1 literature (and Tolkien's specific experiences) than I had ever done before. Secondly, when Faramir told Imrahil the whole story concerning Denethor. I hadn't planned for that at all - the story became three times longer than I'd intended.
2. What invention or technology that's come along in the past ten or twenty years or so has most changed your daily life, and has this been for the better or for worse?
Although I think it's older than 20 years, I didn't start using it on a regular basis until ten years ago, so I'm going to say e-mail. Nothing fancy, not yer world wide web or yer bulletin board - just your bog-standard text e-mail, which is all you need to communicate with someone on the other side of the world who is for some reason passionate about exactly the same thing that you are. For good or ill.
I've gone a bit technology resistant these days: I've pretty much abandoned my mobile phone (stupid thing) and the whole downloading music thing has passed by. Why? Because I'm lazy and can't be bothered to learn new tricks. Crappy quality won't make me abandon my 78s, even if you just can't get the shellac since the war. (Oh all right, they're compilation tapes.)
If we're going to keep exactly to what the question is asking, then I'll say the ability to pause live television, because... Well, let me just say that again: Pausing live television! How brilliant is that? I need never sit through another advert again. That's what I call empowerment.
3. What activity or pursuit that you really enjoy -- APART from reading or writing -- would you like to find the time to do more?
Dancing, and not in a Steven Moffat sense. And 'time to do more', in the sense of 'time to do at all'. I Irish danced (badly) as a child, and ballroom danced (passably) as a teenager. I'd love to learn to Charleston. And tango, although I'm much too short and it would look preposterous.
4. If you could invite three people from history to dinner (the same dinner, this is a party) who would they be?
Mill, Wollstonecraft, Marx. Let's get this ideal society thing sorted out once and for all, shall we?
5. What school subject did you find the most difficult as a child?
At the time, I thought it was anything that fell under something broadly defined as 'science', but later on I realized that it was anything that was taught primarily by means of decontextualized facts (which didn't for some reason include memorizing historical facts, I think maybe because my father had filled the house with history books which I'd dipped into from an early age, and maybe because they make their own context the more you remember). Once I have some context (or some sense of an underlying pattern) then I'm generally OK. A good example would be learning foreign languages, which I just can't do. Grasping grammar, syntax - no worries. Memorizing vocabulary - it just doesn't happen. The source of all my woes. I never had the Latin.
fictualities asked me five questions for the interview meme. Being net-less gave me the opportunity to finish them up. 1. In any of the longer stories/novels you've written, what's the moment when you felt that you knew something about one of the main characters that you didn't know before?
Two moments, writing A Game of Chess. Firstly, when Faramir first presented me with PTSD. This made me go much more deeply into World War 1 literature (and Tolkien's specific experiences) than I had ever done before. Secondly, when Faramir told Imrahil the whole story concerning Denethor. I hadn't planned for that at all - the story became three times longer than I'd intended.
2. What invention or technology that's come along in the past ten or twenty years or so has most changed your daily life, and has this been for the better or for worse?
Although I think it's older than 20 years, I didn't start using it on a regular basis until ten years ago, so I'm going to say e-mail. Nothing fancy, not yer world wide web or yer bulletin board - just your bog-standard text e-mail, which is all you need to communicate with someone on the other side of the world who is for some reason passionate about exactly the same thing that you are. For good or ill.
I've gone a bit technology resistant these days: I've pretty much abandoned my mobile phone (stupid thing) and the whole downloading music thing has passed by. Why? Because I'm lazy and can't be bothered to learn new tricks. Crappy quality won't make me abandon my 78s, even if you just can't get the shellac since the war. (Oh all right, they're compilation tapes.)
If we're going to keep exactly to what the question is asking, then I'll say the ability to pause live television, because... Well, let me just say that again: Pausing live television! How brilliant is that? I need never sit through another advert again. That's what I call empowerment.
3. What activity or pursuit that you really enjoy -- APART from reading or writing -- would you like to find the time to do more?
Dancing, and not in a Steven Moffat sense. And 'time to do more', in the sense of 'time to do at all'. I Irish danced (badly) as a child, and ballroom danced (passably) as a teenager. I'd love to learn to Charleston. And tango, although I'm much too short and it would look preposterous.
4. If you could invite three people from history to dinner (the same dinner, this is a party) who would they be?
Mill, Wollstonecraft, Marx. Let's get this ideal society thing sorted out once and for all, shall we?
5. What school subject did you find the most difficult as a child?
At the time, I thought it was anything that fell under something broadly defined as 'science', but later on I realized that it was anything that was taught primarily by means of decontextualized facts (which didn't for some reason include memorizing historical facts, I think maybe because my father had filled the house with history books which I'd dipped into from an early age, and maybe because they make their own context the more you remember). Once I have some context (or some sense of an underlying pattern) then I'm generally OK. A good example would be learning foreign languages, which I just can't do. Grasping grammar, syntax - no worries. Memorizing vocabulary - it just doesn't happen. The source of all my woes. I never had the Latin.
