Monthly Archives: October 2014

Teatime Tuesday!

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So, I drink a lot of tea. My Steepster account shows how bad the obsession is. (Steepster is sort of like Facebook for tea people.) Spoiler: It’s bad. I hoard tea like Ebneezer Scrooge hoards gold. I compare flavors and varietals. I adjust water temperature and steep time according to tea type. I know the difference between gyokuro, sencha, matcha, hojicha, and genmaicha. I’ve tasted all of them.

I know what rooibos is.

Okay, so that’s not much of an accomplishment in the age of the Internet. But it’s safe to say that I’m a tea nerd. (An amateur one, but still!) I couldn’t survive as a writer without it. Tea keeps me calm, boosts my energy, and inspires me. My characters drink it as well. Many of them live in nineteenth-century England, or enjoy it for other reasons. I use tea as a way to experience a part of their lives.

In that spirit, I thought I would take afternoon tea today, and share a few photos.

Teatime!

It seems appropriate to start with the most obvious tea possible. So today I’m drinking David’s Organic English Breakfast blend. (David’sTEA is a Canadian company with a number of stores in the U.S. They have a lot of interesting flavors, and you can check out their teas here.)

Mug!

Behold my tea mug! Fitting for a writer’s blog, isn’t it?

Organic English Breakfast

English Breakfast is a mixture of different types of black tea. The exact blend varies by company. It’s strong and malty, and goes well with milk and sugar. It also has a lot of caffeine. (Less than coffee, but more than most other teas.) Traditionally, you drink it for breakfast—but people have it all the time now. When I visited England this summer, one of the tour guides said that a lot of modern Brits only drink English Breakfast, even at teatime. The strong taste makes it a good choice to pair with food. Speaking of which…

Tea with Ginger Biscuits

Ginger biscuits! I found these in the gift shop at Highclere Castle during my trip. Highclere Castle, as in, the place where they film Downtown Abbey. I’ll have to write a post about it sometime. (If only to talk about what’s in their basement!)

Me at Highclere Castle

Well, that’s it for teatime! Have a lovely afternoon.

So, Why Story?

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I’ve wanted to write a post about this topic for a long time. This is the short version; I might expand later. Basically, I want to answer a simple question… Why am I so fascinated by stories, and fiction in particular?

The first part of the question is easy to answer. Humans are hard-wired to enjoy story. We crave the narrative form, even in nonfiction. It hooks us, holds our attention, and feels more personal than a basic repetition of facts. (I could go into more detail about this, but I’ll leave that for a later post.)

The second part of the question is harder. When it comes to stories, why do I prefer fiction? I think it comes down to two reasons: possibility and meaning. To a certain extent, stories about factual events are limited. They’re constrained by what actually happened, by the limits of the “real world.” I enjoy broader possibilities when it comes to story—infinite outcomes, unusual characters, different worlds.

Then there’s the issue of meaning. When it comes to factual events, there’s an element of randomness that can’t be avoided. Sometimes, things in life just happen. Fans of narrative nonfiction appreciate this; they feel that the “realness” of chance improves the story, making it authentic and unpredictable.

Personally, I prefer the orchestrated meaning of fiction: where the author chooses each outcome, as part of a larger narrative. A fictional story is an act of creation—intentional, constructed. Good fiction is a work of art; each detail is included for a reason. Generally, I read nonfiction to find out what happens. I read fiction to experience the author’s vision, to discover new thoughts and ideas to appreciate.

To sum up, I like real-life stories about interesting people… Olympic athletes, musicians, and so on. But I love stories about characters who do incredible things that no one in this world ever could. These stories are exciting, and expand my mind—but they also make me think, and give me courage, because the characters’ struggles still remind me of my own. Which means the conclusions they reach about their lives can also become meaningful to me.

I guess what I’m saying is, an epic story can make life more epic. I crave that feeling, but I also need it to keep living. I think Samwise Gamgee in The Two Towers said it best…

“Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something, even if you were too small to understand why.”

This is My Story

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Hello, Internet! I’m returning to this blog after a two-year hiatus. I stopped posting for many reasons—some of them too personal to share here—but one of the biggest was a lack of direction, as far as blogging is concerned. To be honest, I’m still struggling with the question of what I want this blog to be. I’m an aspiring writer, and this is my professional website. But I don’t want to lecture fellow writers about the writing process… I’m still learning, and other writers give better advice about it than I can. I also don’t want to post too much about my daily experiences. My life is pretty boring, generally. I drink tea and I edit manuscripts. Not exactly post-worthy stuff.

But I do want to talk about stories. Stories are what excite me, what inspire me. I became a writer because of my love for fiction, and narrative in general. I’ve loved stories since I was a kid, and they define me—who I have been, who I am now, and who I want to become someday.

So I want to talk about why I love stories, and how I came to love them. I want to talk about my experiences with story—as a girl, as a geek, and as a writer. In the process, I hope to take a few trips down memory lane, and by exploring my own journey with story, become more enlightened about my views on it.

Most of all, I hope it will be interesting—both to myself, and any readers out there who might be curious.

Well, here’s hoping!