That bit of Zen up there is from an introduction to snowmobiling. I'm already on that scene and now is when I really wish I'd managed to pick up that real-world experience.
I've talked before about how the stuff I love to have in a book; the look, the feel. But the five-senses descriptions and the specific, concrete details are the things that are less frequently discussed. Read fifteen articles, and every one will tell you how many tons of bombs were dropped and what the names of the generals were but it takes all fifteen to get even a little bit of the slick mud and the stench and the reality of being in that battle.
Well, I'm realizing there's another, related one. Instructions are all about how not to get it wrong. As a writer, I want to know how to get it wrong. I want my characters to make mistakes, to get hurt. I want the part of the story that is interesting.
How many travel stories are about, "The train was on time, our hotel was fine, the museum was open?" Well, too many. The ones you remember are about being lost in the wrong part of Dublin at three AM.
So I'm having to go further afield to figure out what the experience is for a rider so totally neophyte she doesn't even know that going off-trail is supposed to be the advanced stuff.
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And been keeping the printer busy. It sits on my desk at work and filament is cheap so every few hours I wander by and select something new on the thumb drive.
Someone mentioned my old circle was doing a Traveller game so I figured some SF "scatter terrain" (as it appears they call it these days) wouldn't be a total waste of filament. Besides, I'm still tweaking settings in the slicer (Cura) and seeing what tricks I can do.
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