Thursday, August 19, 2021

Hunter-Gatherer

 ​​RHYS BOWEN:  I am, by nature, a hunter-gatherer. Put me on a beach and the first thing I do is look for shells. I have no need for shells but the chance finding of a really unusual or pretty one sends me into spasms of delight. The supreme find is whole sand-dollars and I went out every morning hunting when I was in San Diego. No perfect ones this time, I’m afraid. I think the waves were too strong where we were staying.


When I’m at a mountain stream I select bright stones, realizing, of course, that once they are dry they will never look so pretty again. Add to these unusual pieces of driftwood, polished sea-glass, moss-covered twigs. John rolls his eyes as I carry my treasures back to the car. “What are you going to do with those?” he asks. “Don’t you already have plenty of shells?”

                “Of course,” I reply. “And I’m not going to do anything. I found them. I’m going to keep them.”

One of the big thrills of my life was when I was at a friend’s cabin in the mountains and we dug for crystals. Actually the crystal vein was on a sheer cliff face and I found myself standing on a narrow ledge, swinging a pickaxe and watching crystals tumble down. I was so absorbed in the task that I did not think I might be in danger of falling and hurting myself. I can well see how the miners got gold fever back in 1849. The fact that these quartz crystals weren’t worth anything and I could buy more perfect ones at a rock shop had nothing to do with it. I wasn’t going to do anything with them. It was the thrill of the hunt, the discovery of something that I found.



I could imagine my long-ago ancestors gasping with delight when they spied something pretty in the ground, or even a bird’s feather, a bright pebble. They stood and stared, realizing that these things were not good to eat. They were not useful, but they were beautiful and perfect. Perhaps that was when we became human.

I suppose this trait is common to all writers. We are hunter-gatherers of information, of emotions, of senses. Other people sit in a restaurant and dine. We writers listen in to conversations, shamelessly noting the good parts we might use some day. We notice mannerisms. At the airport, waiting to board the flight we notice who is nervous, who is excited, who has just said goodbye to a loved one.

I was once in the pool at my health club and overheard a woman in the next lane say “Of course, the gun-belt weighs you down.”  Guess who swam slowly to listen in? (I never did find out the whole story or who she was!) I've also been in a restaurant, discussing the most efficient way to kill somebody and then noticed diners at other tables staring uncomfortably!

We read other writers’ books and notice a perfect turn of phrase, a clever plot twist. We gather snippets and ideas for future use. I had a friend who had a Gallo wine box into which she dropped scraps of paper with thoughts on them. When she wanted to start a new book she drew out bits of paper and found characters, plot ideas, settings.

I don’t do that, but I do scribble down future story ideas. I love notebooks. (I know Debs does too). I have many half-finished notebooks because I always want to start a new one for a new trip or a new book. So I can open one and look back at a description of a place to be used in Constable Evans. Or thoughts on a future Royal Spyness when I was staying in Cornwall one year:  wouldn’t it be fun if Georgie went to Cornwall and found a house just like Manderley?


And the most satisfying thing about those is that they turned into books one day. That thought  about Georgie in Cornwall became THE LAST MRS. SUMMERS.   My summer in Tuscany became The Tuscan Child. A visit to a bomber command museum in Eastern England will come out next year as my next stand-alone called THE TEASHOP AT THE EDGE OF ETERNITY.

It is rare that I haven’t managed to use a good idea at some stage in some form.

SO WHO else is a gatherer? A collector? Who else listens in to conversations? And who has overheard a snippet that later became a book?

31 comments:

  1. These days everyone sits so far away from each other that it’s practically impossible to overhear other conversations.

    Collections? We have a few . . .
    . . . meteorite samples, rocks that once lived on the moon, space stuff . . . .
    . . . the sand dollars and the sea glass and what-nots gathered together in an oversized bubble-jar sitting in the center of the table.
    . . . geodes; the revelation when they’re cut open is almost as good as the anticipation of what the inside will look like.
    . . . Precious Moments figurines.

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    1. Geodes are so cool Joan, though I've never seen the act of cutting one open!

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    2. Lucy, when the girls were young, we used to go to a geode shop. You picked [and paid for] the geode you wanted and then they cut it open for you. The girls loved picking their own geodes and were always excited to see the inside of their geodes; it was one of our favorite things to do and we ended up with some lovely specimens . . . .

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  2. I'm a voyeur and eavesdropper from way back, but as Joan said, it's a lot harder when you're sitting far away and mingling in public as little as possible. I still study the way people stand and walk, make up stories about this or that grouping of people, comb their hair or slouch at a table. All of that goes into books.

    I don't gather shells or pick crystals from a rock face, but I do love notebooks. I have eight small ones right now lined up waiting for me to do some pen and ink brainstorming, and the daily to -do-list notebook is always open at the right side of my desk.

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    1. About spying conversations, won’t it be more and more difficult if adding to the distance, you see more people play with their phones instead of speaking ?

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  3. No notebooks for me! Although I used to take a plain little pad in my purse. That was before the iphone was so handy. (though if I could draw the way you do Rhys, I'd have notebooks for sure!) I do have a beach rock collection on the counter, many of them heart-shaped. One year a sister in law admired them, and so I spent the next 4 or 5 months collecting hearts for her and gave them to her for Christmas. It was the best present I could have chosen!

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    1. Love this, Roberta! I've always had an affinity for hearts, so when I found a poster of heart shapes in natural items I had to get it. What is it about that shape that is so appealing? Actual hearts are not really shaped that way.

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    2. What a perfect, individual gift! One of the stairs to my condo had a heart-shaped knothole. I loved when the little discovered it. <3
      My family gives me many handkerchiefs and socks, because I need them, and I appreciate their handiwork.

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  4. I always looked for shells with my kids when we went to the beach. And I have a whole collection of them I brought back from the Caribbean the time I worked there.

    I have ten of the original Madame Alexander dolls, but I have to find a doll hospital for them. The rubber that held the pieces together dried and snapped, so there are a lot of disconnected heads and appendages.

    I still listen in on people. A snippet of conversation overheard on the street years ago was the genesis for my first novel, ROOT OF ALL EVIL. My critique group usually meets in Panera and we've gotten many a look as we blithely discuss murder over lunch. LOL

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    1. I have Madame Alexander dolls too, Liz. I never thought of the elastic bands drying out. I'm going to be checking mine this weekend.

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  5. Yes indeedy I'm a magpie when it comes to finding plot ideas. And snippets of dialogue. And when I rode the subway I'd keep a little notebook in which I described my fellow passengers who'd later show up in my stories. It's hard to make up details when you're sitting in your office. OTHERWISE, aside from a collection of found feathers, and another of all of the name badges from events I've attended since I published my first book, and a collection my husband's cartoons, I'm not a collector.

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  6. The thing I have the most of is books! No surprise there. As an archaeologist, I 'collected' many things--what I loved was taking everything back to the lab and sorting it out. Sometimes you'd find a beautifully made projectile point in colorful flint that was much much earlier than anything else at a site--and you'd realize that our ancestors too must have appreciated things of beauty and curated them.

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  7. Wow, Flora, what a realization. And of course they did.

    While I have not walked the farm in quite awhile--Steve and I have used it as a handy way to distance when our quarantine isolation has gotten to be too much--I have often collected feathers and acorns around the place. (There are seven or eight different kinds of oak trees). The former owner scoured that farm, but everywhere else she could get to as a rural real estate agent, and collected boxes of arrowheads left by ancient tribes. I've never been lucky enough to find one. But I have found completely intact turtle shells, bleached white and beautiful in their starkness.

    Rhys, I collected all sorts of observations on that Tuscan trip, and put them in a OneDrive file. None of them have sparked ideas for a book, but revisiting them brings that trip right back.

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  8. I love reading this and learning what people collect! As a serial collector, my collections change and evolve over time. I have crystals, cat and angel figurines, mugs from memorable trips and notebooks. I've sloughed off on the notebooks lately, but reading this has revitalized me. Off to Amazon!

    Yes to conversations. It's little snippets that turn into great ideas! I miss that now that we are not going to restaurants.

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  9. At a beach I too would collect shells and pretty pebbles and sea glass. My best finds were 2 unusually large sand dollars I found at York Beach, Maine. My family accused me of "finding" gift shop purchases.

    I make up stories about people, too. On my walks or even driving by houses I will see things that make me create an entire story of what was going on. one day there were 2 people standing in front of a door and 3 police cars in the driveway. i thought about that one for days.

    One of the best places to meet strangers and hear their stories is in the cat food section of the store. A woman told me how she had 17! cats because people kept dropping them off in front of her house. She told me their names and described their personalities. She had a friend who wanted one of the cats but she "just couldn't give one up." There was no indication she was a cat hoarder and she had been putting out the word that she would not take in any more. She was a fascinating woman, as was an elderly man I met who lived alone since his wife had died. But he had pets for company.

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  10. Rhys,

    Yes, yes, yes to everything you just said about writers and where they get their inspiration. That illusive concept comes from everywhere, even something that would considered mundane for anyone else is fodder for a writer. One thing that plays an important role in my books is setting. I often comes across a place and think, "Would this be the perfect setting to find a dead body?"

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  11. Oh, I love this, Rhys! You’ve definitely tapped the vein of creativity. :) You’ll have to come to our cottage on the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia - there is a place called Amethyst Cove and you have time the tide just right but it is an amethyst lover’s Nirvana.

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  12. Spoons, tea cups, bears, the previously mentioned dolls, lots of yarn, books. I love finding old things that might have a story or special meaning. I have shells, many of them are abalone that my brother-in-law picked when still they lived in Santa Rosa. Yummy and a great reminder of when the niece and nephew were little ones. I do "people watch" but am careful to not stare. Wouldn't want anyone think I was plotting something. :)

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  13. I can not resist looking for seashells and sea glass and whatever on a beach. And they come home with me. Inland I look for fossils and rocks. I have some lovely chunks of calcite that keep a gate open in our yard. One of my favorite experiences was buying a bucket of dirt, as my husband put it, and sorting through it for gemstones in N.C. Found some cool stuff too! We did used to look for arrowheads at my grandparents' ranch when I was a kid. Lots of flint but no points.

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  14. I'm not just a gatherer, but an accumulator. I don't even have to try. Things just show up. You know... generous friends who say, Oh, what a cute cat thingy. Susan likes cats. I'll get it for her.

    Oh wait, now that I've read all the comments, I see Judi, above, had a similar tale...with LIVE cats.

    When it comes to collecting story elements, it's not so much overheard snippets as faces, people. I see someone on a beach or at a restaurant, and raise my camera (now my phone) zoom in and click. Much much easier than it used to be, when people might actually notice you're taking a picture of them.

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  15. RHYS, i LOVE that title TEADSHOP. Any chance a future novel will be about a Bookshop? I am always looking for novels about bookshops.

    Yes, I love to gather information for my novel. I just spent the morning thinking of interesting character descriptions like "the baffled barrister". In college, I often hunted for my research paoers.

    Yes, I "overhear" conversations, though my case is a bit different. I "eyes evasdrop" conversations especially if I am reading lips (shades of a story from the Babysitters' Club") or I happen to see a conversation in Sign Language. You never know who may Understand Sign Language when you are out there in the public.

    Interesting story. I only learned of this second hand. Someone said as a joke in Sign Language "Kill the President of the USA" and there were off duty Secret Service Agents who saw this and they UNDERSTOOD every word. Yes, the agents whisked the Signer to be questioned by the FBI or was it the police? I cannot recall the details.

    Yes, there are times when I take a photo of something that made me think of a story element. And I also have been looking at photos of British actors / British actresses for different characters that I am creating.

    Diana

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  16. I'm always poking around in the garden, picking up feathers and eggshells, snakeskins, cicada husks, which I think are fascinating and like to draw. Obviously I collect notebooks and journals, and fountain pens! That has been my pandemic mania.

    When I'm in the UK I'm "collecting" everything. Possible scene settings, people, clothing, names, foods... Sigh.

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  17. I'm a collector for sure. I've got to admit, the internet has made that easy in some ways. I still remember the thrill of finding an out of print book I wanted in a used bookstore. Now you can go online and easily find it.

    Anyway, I have collections of books, pins, and ornaments. I don't really need any more of any of those, but I keep buying them. (Seriously, I could probably go a year without buying books and not run out of things I haven't read in my condo.)

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  18. I do love seashells, and I have several small collections of them. I'm not as good at finding them as others in my family are, which can be frustrating for me. I have a box from my childhood with seashells, and that's special to me. I should probably do something with those shells, something decorative, but having them in that old box comforts me.

    I am definitely a collector. Of course, books are at the top of that list, but I enjoy quirky items, too. I have goats in various forms--pictures, art piece from Key West, and even a stuffed animal. No live goats, but I'd love a pygmy one. I have some Occupied in Japan figurines that are a favorite collection. That's just the tip of the ice berg, and I can't talk about my Beanie Babies because my children have shamed me too much.

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  19. Rhys, just from knowing there is a Tea Shop on the Edge of Eternity brings a smile and excitement. Oh, when next year?

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  20. I am a bit of a magpie, gathering "pretties" which sometimes get used in projects, but often not . . . or not yet.
    You may not have made much from shells and crystals, but my what you've made from ideas! As for the rest, Emerson said beauty is its own excuse for being. <3

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  21. "You didn't pack rocks in your suitcase, did you you?" Well, yes I did, and still do. But only the ones that feel "right" in my hand or speak to me in some spiritual way. I bring home at least one from every trip. I think it's the timelessness of them that appeals to me, and the wonder of how they made the journey from their mysterious origins to the the spot where I found them.

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