Daily writing prompt:
What is your favorite hobby or pastime?
I have far too many interests, and that has translated into a lot of hobbies. I have pursued:
- Singing
- Guitar
- Piano
- Clarinet
- Role playing games (which spun off its own host of subsidiary hobbies including cartography)
- Acting
- Woodworking
- Photography
- Drawing
- Web development
- Application development
Some of those were long-term pursuits. I started playing Dungeons and Dragons when I was thirteen and was involved enough in the hobby to do a few freelance jobs for Steve Jackson Games. Then I stopped playing about ten years ago. Most interests waxed and waned. Guitar was on-again, off-again for about fifteen years. Woodworking is currently in the rotation but there have been years when I didn’t even look at a power tool. A few were brief interests. I started acting in high school, decided that I wanted to pursue it as a career, and then lost interest in it within two years. Clarinet lasted six weeks.
The one interest that remains constant is writing fiction. I never tire of creating characters and worlds for them to engage with. That was why I played RPGs for so long, and why I always preferred running the game to being a player. The reason I gave it up was that it wasn’t as satisfying to wait for players to interact with my creations. I wanted to tell the whole story myself.
Writing fiction is my oldest pursuit. I wrote my first short story in second grade and I can’t remember a time since then when I didn’t write stories. Around fifteen years ago, I decided to focus on the mystery genre. The road has been anything but straight since then with a lot of setbacks, but I’ve never quit. I don’t think I can. Telling stories is such a fundamental part of myself that stopping would be like deciding to give up breathing.
