AUTHOR'S NOTE: I really don't know what this is. It has a little intro I wrote to the editor of the Fantasy Newsletter on the writing site I belong to, saying that I'd written it up for the newsletter's birthday and I was sorry I put it off so long, I hoped she could still use it and I tried to keep it short. I can only guess she solicited letters from fantasy writers on the site to include in the birthday newsletter and this was mine. Anyway...here you go, sans the intro note I wrote to the editor.
If I had to pick a time to say when I first became interested in fantasy, I would then have to say I was born with it. :) For as long as I can remember I've been more interested in creating fantasy worlds and playing with imaginary beings, whether as friends or as characters in stories, rather than in the real world. When I was little, I would spend hours playing with toy animals and concocting detailed stories about their lives. As I got older, those little toy animals were replaced by fictional characters in stories, yet the basics remained the same. I still play with them, on the page now instead of on cardboard-and-tape landscapes, and I still concoct detailed stories about their lives. I just like to think I've matured a little bit doing it.
I still prefer to deal with fantasy, both in writing and reading, rather than the real world, as with fantasy those of us who are painfully shy can live out and play through our hopes and fears. I've found that the basic emotions of all of my characters are my own emotions, just given a different face and purpose. Once in a while a character of mine even surprises me with how close their motives are to my own...when I never knew those were my motives. Fantasy may simply be another way for me to escape reality, which is not always a healthy thing, but I prefer this option to none at all. Those of us who have difficulty dealing with real people and real troubles can sometimes allay our fears through writing. Through fantasy, we can be powerful and confident for a change...the only catch is to remember where the line between fantasy and reality lies, so we know when we can cross it safely. And so people don't give us funny looks when we do. :)
I could try to pick a writer or person I like and say how they inspire me, but I'd never be able to. I'm inspired more by older and more basic things that have no particular author. Myths and legends played a big part even in my earliest play with my little toy animals. I tend to pick up little details from the things around me; the more something intrigues me, the more details of it make their way into my writing, and my moods change. Hence phases I go through, when I would prefer to write about ancient Egyptian things, or when I would prefer to write about Ojibwa things, or when I would prefer to write about furry things...these stories all come about based on my mood when I sit down at the computer, hence more writing about one particular subject than another.
Though the nudgings of an interested reader can do much to convince me to write about something as well. :) Like I said, I'm inspired by what I find around me--sometimes things which are so little that no one else would even notice them, like a glint in a crystal. Once in a while, simply knowing my writing and my fantasies are appreciated is more than enough to inspire me to keep going.
Needless to say, I have written and shared much more of myself since coming online, now that I have people to share it with. And though I'm never very good at thanking those people in person, I am always grateful for their encouragement. I would still be writing even without an audience, as I did for over ten years, but I would not be enjoying it nearly as much.
And that's the way it is. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment