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National Trivia Day 2025
Bet you didn’t know today was National Trivia Day. January seems like a good time to stay inside and play trivia games or just hang out with family and friends.
Profundity Becomes Trivia
In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia. ~Charles Lindbergh
Ultimately, every field of human study is trivia. Depending on your point of view, what matters deeply to one person is completely irrelevant to another.
That’s fine. The world is a big place. Some of us make a habit of sweeping up random tidbits of useless knowledge.
There was a time where that just made you a bookish little weirdo. When the Trivial Pursuit game came out, it suddenly gave you some level of credibility.
Here’s some Rob trivia:
- What does Rob like to do?
- Sleep
- What doesn’t Rob get to do nearly enough?
- Sleep
Yes, it’s only a few days after New Year’s and I’m swamped with stuff to do.
Fortunately, as of this weekend, writing this year’s Holiday Season Serial Romance is no longer among them.
It ends tomorrow with a big wrap-up back at the Wisler Institute.
That gives me Sunday to sort of recover and get back into work mode. Yay.
I put myself on a writing fast last January and I didn’t particularly enjoy the experience.
No, this year I’m just going to treat myself to as much glorious, restorative sleep as I can manage.
If that leaves me time to get some writing done, fantastic.
If not, I’ve got a big stack of books waiting to be read and a queue of shows and movies I’ve been putting off.
January is time for the ❄️ long Winter‘s nap ❄️ with strong emphasis on the long and the nap parts.
Brain 🧠⚡ Dump
50 AMAZING Facts to Blow Your Mind! 150
If you haven’t already sponged up a bunch of random nonsense to amaze your friends with over the years, here’s a guy with 50 random things you might want to file away.
Another kind of “trivia” that a lot of people hold onto is jokes. We all had a decent repertoire of knock knock jokes back in our childhood and often bring them out to delight our kids when we are blessed to have some.
Some of us have a collection of more complex jokes and full-on humorous anecdotes to regale people with in polite conversation.
As previously stated, what’s intensely interesting to someone is random trivia to another.
Calling out trivia as trivia actually demeans the fact that you’re still accumulating knowledge.
While some trivia might be some fun little bit of conversation glue, another random factoid might actually be the crucial puzzle piece you were missing in life.
You just never know, so keep your ears open. You never know when a random factoid will lead to a major epiphany.
Trivia Of The Moment
It is exciting to write about the present once one gets beyond the trivia of the moment. As a time to live in, as a time to think about, the present is intriguing. ~Vikram Seth
He’s got a point there. As much as I like to imagine stories taking place in the far future of a SciFi setting or the distant past of an Epic Fantasy or Sword & Sorcery setting, stories in the here and now (fictionalized, of course) have a lot to offer to a writer.
For one thing, you can dispense with a lot of the extraneous descriptions.
People might not have a decent idea of what a starship corridor or a primeval dungeon look like from your perspective, but they can pretty easily envision a diner, a homey kitchen or a dingy little apartment.
There’s no concern about going into depth about a rainstorm or a snow flurry.
You don’t need to stress about describing a tree-lined street, a noisy factory or a busy office.
People have a pretty good idea about that.
Another thing is that you can just speak as people do.
In alternate settings, the patterns of life and speech will be driven by factors other than what shaped our speech today.
It’s fun to imagine how people would live and carry themselves and speak if they had to be wary of goblins and dragons or if they were members of the galactic nobility, but with contemporary settings, that’s not really a consideration.
There are plusses and minuses to every choice made in writing a book. Making those choices consciously is important to help maintain consistency.
That’s all for today. I’ve got tons of writing yet to do and lots of sleep to catch up on. See you on Wednesday for something I absolutely cannot live without.