Friday, December 28, 2007

Weird Hobby

One of the writers' magazines, Writer's Digest, I think, has a section for debut authors who answer a quick set of questions about themselves and they way they work alongside a brief description of their books. One of the topicss the authors are invited to expound upon is "weird hobby".

The question bothered me for days, because I always thought that you really couldn't get any weirder than writing. The compulsion to write is in and of itself strange, and the end product of writing can be downright mystifying. I'm sure I'm not alone among people who write--whether they be avid hobbyists, seasoned professionals, or people who simply have no choice but to write--when I sometimes have no idea where an idea or a scene came from. Sure, I can track down the psychological or historical context for most of my work by rooting around in my brain, sifting through memories and tromping through the id. But some stuff...I don't know where it comes from.

And that, my friends,is weird.

But I guess writing doesn't qualify as a weird hobby for the little interview. I realized this in the act of adding the 24,959th song iPod, something I was doing by burning a track from one of my many albums into mp3 format. I was informed not soon afterwards that not only was the size of my music collection weird, taking the time to burn tracks off of vinyl onto mp3 when they were readily available digitally through iTunes or wherever else was weird. Owning vinyl is considered by some to be weird, although it is less likely to be considered so by people in my own age bracket, even those who donated their records to Goodwill soon after college.

I'm starting a new weird hobby. I'll try to embed a bit of music trivia into each post. In "Weird Hobby" lurks the name of a song that a British band who recorded on the Creation Label released as a single. Can you name the song and band?

So, what's yer weird hobby??????????

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