I love being a writer for many reasons. I’m rediscovering some of those reasons right now. But one of my favorites is being able to dive into concepts and ideas, into ages and eras, and immerse myself in a subject both for the sake of my writing and for my own personal enjoyment.
Case in point: right now, I am remembering how much I love pirates.
To be fair, I love the popular Hollywood / fictional motif of pirates. I’ve done enough research to know that I am romanticizing the subject, that the truth is actually a bit unpleasant, that modern pirates are a legitimate danger in some parts of the world, et cetera. But for a while, when they were all the rage, I spent a sizeable amount of my creative time playing with the concept.
I’ve seen all but the most recent Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and was a fan of the ride long before Disney started making movies out of park attractions. I bought Cutthroat Island on DVD, watched it and really enjoyed it. I was in a band with a friend for a while, and we even wrote a pirate metal song. And once upon a time, I wrote out a little bit of pirate fan fiction that grew into a full-fledged story setting of its own.
I’m not going to get into the details of this particular world-building exercise right now. But in the last few weeks I’ve been resurrecting a number of old ideas and realizing that I have some legitimate publishable material in them somewhere. I’m turning worlds into novels, and novels into short stories. This is one of them. My pirates may sail again, one day, and bring their terror and adventures to many a port once more.
Yesterday, it was steampunk and airships. Literally. Last week, it was Victorian-era mysteries. Today it is pirates. And don’t get me started on the surprisingly-good story ideas that came out of rewatching one of my favorite animes a few weeks ago.
I love being a writer. I go on the most amazing adventures, often without ever leaving my home. Or my computer.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a 16th Century port village to ransack.
Posted While Listening to the Soundtrack of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006)
The Artist and the Engineer 