It killed the cat, but made the writer

Writing Life: 10

As a writer, curiosity is one of the greatest gifts I have ever received—and I don’t even know how or when it happened, or who was responsible. If I had to guess, I’d say I was born with it but I’m no expert, at least not yet. Whether that means my overactive sense of curiosity was inherited or it spontaneously erupted out of the ether, I do believe it entered my life—or revealed itself—with a vengeance when I was a just a kid. Curiosity.

While not a universal truth, writers often have much in common—a love of language, an affinity for storytelling, an interest in relationships and the broader human condition, a need to examine the complexities of the heart, a desire to confront or at least consider existential threats to society, let alone the planet. To me, that can all be distilled into a single critical trait that so many writers share—curiosity. Are there even any writers who aren’t curious? I somehow doubt it.

Back in the day…

When I was very young, I would cycle through obsessive interests every few weeks or so. My parents called them “Terry’s kicks.” I would read something or see something that caught my interest, then I would research the living daylights out of it and become annoyingly well-informed on the topic until I was distracted by my next big interest and off I’d go again. It would take too long to enumerate all of my “kicks,” but a fractional sampling would include hockey, baseball, kite-flying, car racing, flight (gliders, planes, hovercrafts, balloons), space, boxing (only briefly), chess, golf, Sherlock Holmes, Paris, diving (springboard, not Scuba), politics, go-karts, guitar, song-writing, engineering, fountain pens, the history of medicine (my dad was a surgeon), among so, so many others. Now some of these topics reared their heads later in life, but my response is the same now as it was back then. I look into it, investigate it, research it, read books, talk to people about it, learn all I can about it. It’s almost as if I have no control over it. If a new topic seizes me, well, it seizes me. Some topics are but passing flirtations (e.g. kite-flying) while others have stayed with me for years—decades—with little chance of them fading (e.g. aviation, space, song-writing).

Growing up, I remember that familiar feeling of anticipation and excitement as I headed to the card catalogue in the public library to dig into a new “kick.” The librarian would say something like: “Back again? What is it this week?” I still experience curiosity’s singular sensation on a regular basis. We grow older, but I’m not sure we change all that much. But now, I head to Google for immediate gratification and less frequently to the public library’s card catalogue (some branches still have them).

Curiosity’s yield

My interests and passions are very wide-ranging. Early in my writing life, I well remember giving a talk at a writers conference on a Saturday afternoon, and then rushing home to pick up our two sons to take them to Monster Jam, a deafening, chaotic, and metal-crunching exhibition of monster trucks crushing cars, flying through the air, and spinning around at dizzying speeds.

A full day. Closing keynote at a writers conference in the afternoon and then to Monster Jam with our two sons in the evening. Curiosity means I enjoyed both.

I loved both events that day. That’s what my curiosity has given me—a very broad field of interests and I hope an ability to move seamlessly from one to another, even if their juxtaposition is a little jarring.

If I think about the people I truly admire in history, I seem to gravitate towards polymaths—you know, those Renaissance people who know a little about a lot of different fields and make contributions in multiple disciplines. Leonardo da Vinci is a good example. Fuelled by an insatiable, incurable curiosity, he was a brilliant artist, designer, engineer, inventor, architect, anatomist, and so much more.

Leonardo da Vinci was a brilliant and diverse thinker, artist, engineer, designer across so many varied fields. A role model.

Another example from closer to my time and country, is Alexander Graham Bell. Most simply know him as the inventor of the telephone, but his interests and contributions ranged so much further afield. Beyond the telephone, he was also fascinated by, and made advances in, such diverse subject areas as genetics, aviation, hydrofoils, medicine, and education. Society was the beneficiary of his unrelenting curiosity in so many different fields.

Alexander Graham Bell with his telephone.

Some of Bell’s early tetrahedral kites, and the HD-4, considered the first working hydrofoil. It held the water speed record for more than a decade.

Other curiosity-driven polymaths I’ve been interested in over the years include Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (physician, historian, occultist, writer and creator of Sherlock Holmes) and Stephen Fry (public intellectual, novelist, comedian, actor)—both great writers.

I don’t claim to be a polymath (that’s for the International Federation of Polymaths in Helsinki to decide—okay, I made that part up), nor do I consider myself anywhere near smart enough to make contributions in different fields, but I do feel the push and pull of my multiple interests and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I think the breadth of my interests can be seen across my nine novels.

Curiosity and the writer

And what a gift curiosity is for the writer. Sometimes we mistake our curiosity for scattered, unfocused thinking. No, I don’t think so. Sure, we sometimes need to bear down and see a project through to its end without being distracted by something that catches our eye, or more likely, our mind (in canine terms, “Squirrel!”). But I never begrudge my brain taking me briefly down a different path—and sometimes a rabbit hole—to satisfy my curiosity about whatever has piqued my interest. That’s how we learn, grow, and figure out how we feel about the world and where it’s going.

Curiosity powers many (perhaps most) writers. Curiosity also makes our writing and our stories real, vivid, and true. It drives us to learn enough to write with at least passing understanding, if not authority. If we’re truly interested in a topic, that fascination will come through in the words and the writing. You can’t fake genuine interest.

Some might feel that curiosity can be a curse—it killed the cat, after all—but to me, it’s been a stalwart friend my entire life, and has contributed more to my writing than almost anything else. I give thanks for it everyday.

The witty Dorothy Parker summed it up best when she said…

Truer words were never spoken. I hope they never find a cure.

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