Well
the writing world is gearing up for nano madness – NaNoWrMo = National Novel
Writing Month. Where we, who have signed
November away, write 50,000 words of a new novel in a month. I indulged for the first time last year and
WIP Blue Moon will be the result when it is finished edited polished and general
slicked down for publication – due to all my health problems it wont be this
year as I had hoped but fingers crossed for 2013:)
This
year? Well still at this late date undecided – I have two ideas I want to play
with but which to do, which to do. Both will be fantasy!
What?
I don’t do fantasy.
I
have been saying this for years. I am a
girl(!!!) of logic and reality. I do not
believe in the para normal, fairies, ghosts, vampires, werewolves – ah the list
goes on and on. All that happens has a reasonable explanation, and if we don’t
know what it is now we will in time.
This is my mantra. I don’t write
fantasy – The Sefuty Chronicles are based on scientific fact projected into the
future.
I
don’t do fantasy.
What
then of my short stories, my friend from forever/editor asks? Well. Yes. Okay I
hold my hands up – she has me there, I do write fantasy, it’s just that I never
thought of it in that light. I guess it
comes back to this genre business again.
I have never thought of books in the ‘genre’ if I have liked a book it
is a story not a type of story.
I
have always, if I think about it, read fantasy.
Of course, as a child, all the usual Perrault, Grimes, Anderson
– childhood reads it could be dismissed as, Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland, the
Jungle Book, ah yes, we are still in childhood, it is allowed. Wells, Wyndham all favourites of mine and
although this could be argued to be sci-fi I’m not sure the science would stand
up to scrutiny – and when I read them, pre moon landing era, they were
definitely fantasy and I loved them.
However
when I first read the Fellowship of the Ring I was a teenager. When I read Jules Verne I was no longer a
child nor when I first read Gormanghast. Or first heard of the lost worlds and
ageless women. Watership Down and
Duncton Wood arrived in my twenties. Pratchett in my 40s, Jasper Fforde in my 50s and the Game of Kings
in my 60s. I never stop reading fantasy.
On my twenty years of travel I collected myths and legends from around the
world.
The
Fellowship of the Ring complete with elves, wizards, orcs and hobbits I have
probably read approximately every two years since it was published, I have it
in hard back, paperback, leather-bound and boxed, in cassette tape, CD, video
and DVD but
hey
I don’t do fantasy!
When
I was a child it was explained to me that one of dog’s gross habits – sniffing
lamp-posts was the equivalent of reading the morning newspapers, a story I have
passed on to other generations of children.
To help ensure empathy for the animal world I have always ruthlessly
anthropomorphicised animals – telling the children what the animals think and
say.
Talking
animals? – I don’t do fantasy!
I
went through a very pretentious stage in my 20s and 30s and read ‘good’ literature,
leaving behind the sci-fi, the detective, the, er, fantasy. It couldn’t last of course there is just so much
out there. In my 40s I took myself of to
university and spent most of my time reading scientific and anthropological books
and journals, for light relief I returned to my earlier favourites.
When
I first went to a writing class I had no problems switching from reality to non
reality when presented with an exercise – I am among the dumbest! I was still not
doing fantasy! When I wrote Ellen’s Tale I was adamant it was not sci-fantasy, that
all the modifications I had in the tale were possible in the future I was writing
about. In my short stories I had talking
cats, aliens taking over children, ghostly clowns who kidnapped children to another
world.
Still
I didn’t write fantasy!
This
year during the crazy NaNoWrMo November, I have a choice in my mind. I leave my dystopian world of the future; I walk
away from my dysfunctional modern romance of last year. I try something new? No,
it’s not new:)
The
only problem I am having is will it be talking bacteria or a psychedelic monkey
as narrator? Ah what knotty problems we writers
do have.
So
now, far nearer 70 than 60 I am declaring the truth I have failed to acknowledge
all these years.
I do do fantasy - big time.
