Why do I write what I write?
It's a good question, leading, but still when you look past the superficial airs that are contained in the thought it's really a very good question. Why do I write the things I do rather than strive for The Next Great American Novel...?
I haven't been mulling this over very long, it was just something that popped into my head over the course of my waking hours today. A lingering question my brain woke up with as it struggles with the next chapters of my latest WIP. I found myself wondering why it is that I am drawn to the Fantastical and Paranormal genres, as opposed to writing more of the human condition and the realities and strife of this world and those around me.
Certainly I have a plethora of opinions on the subjects of politics and the manner in which we treat one another. I am not a one dimensional being without wants, feelings, desires, or needs to be realized or expressed. Why don't I write of things from a more rooted and tangible place?
I've written a Contemporary Romance and while that seems trivial it was an odd sort of duck for me as it was so well rooted in the realities of now. It came easily enough, I didn't have to research it or go looking for the story it was already there in my head. Complete with its trials and successes it's imperfect characters reaching for absolution in a world where none can truly be found.
But it wasn't as fulfilling as the hours of struggling that it takes for me to create the fanciful or the paranormal worlds that I have drowned myself in. I found myself wondering truly why that is. I write Epic Fantasy to twist and shape this world into something strange and yet strive to keep something familiar so that the reader has something to hold on to.
Not unlike spinning round and round, without a focus you can fall... I try to always have a focus. Can I tell you what that is? Honestly?? No. It's a peppering of things. Language, environments, a turn of phrase from a familiar character. These things have kept the Fantasy Genera together for me.
I write of Vampires and Werewolves and other things that go bump in the night. Not because it is the popular thing to do but because I have had a visceral, deeply seeded, undiluted obsession with them for so long as I can remember. I devoured my first copy of Dracula when I was seven years old for Christ's sake. Granted I was too young to quite understand the literary meanings behind the story, but there was just something about it that resonated with me.
The idea if immortality. To have lifetimes to shape and reshape one's world. To make and mend mistakes. An opportunity to become the truest of self. To get "it" right. To learn anything the heart could desire or strive for, and have time enough to achieve it.
Time. That is something all preternatural creatures seem to have in abundance. Some write of it as something to be mourned, the strife of seeing loved ones that are not like them wither and die. But I have always seen it as a way to see and celebrate life on a grander scale. To suck the marrow from everything. To feel and experience in a heightened state of perpetual rebirth.
There is also a darkness that is more safely explored in the the paranormal genre that can not be looked at from the more contemporary lines without it becoming horror or taboo. The inevitable taking of lives. The animalistic urges of the human species, the drive to devour everything in its wake including each other is certainly in the forefront of many a Paranormal tale.
Demons devour souls, Vampires take lives and Werewolves in their basest of tales brutalize and savagely destroy towns and people. All are outcasts, left to hide on the skirts of society even as they are the greater of beings. In truth there is so mush more to the Paranormal Genre than many realize.
I think it's this deeper space that pulls me to it. The need to at least for me, to explore the worlds that shun and embrace such darkness all while condemning it to niches and flights of fancy. We are drawn to the dark because without it we would never recognize the light. The Paranormal Genre lets us explore those longing pangs of wanton taboo that we are afraid to uncover when the sun shines so brightly on us.
So I precariously toe the line because I feel that I can more easily write of us and our deepest desires and fears putting it under a safe shroud that can allow us all to embrace the kiss of the darkest flames without the burn.
Certainly I have a plethora of opinions on the subjects of politics and the manner in which we treat one another. I am not a one dimensional being without wants, feelings, desires, or needs to be realized or expressed. Why don't I write of things from a more rooted and tangible place?
I've written a Contemporary Romance and while that seems trivial it was an odd sort of duck for me as it was so well rooted in the realities of now. It came easily enough, I didn't have to research it or go looking for the story it was already there in my head. Complete with its trials and successes it's imperfect characters reaching for absolution in a world where none can truly be found.
But it wasn't as fulfilling as the hours of struggling that it takes for me to create the fanciful or the paranormal worlds that I have drowned myself in. I found myself wondering truly why that is. I write Epic Fantasy to twist and shape this world into something strange and yet strive to keep something familiar so that the reader has something to hold on to.
Not unlike spinning round and round, without a focus you can fall... I try to always have a focus. Can I tell you what that is? Honestly?? No. It's a peppering of things. Language, environments, a turn of phrase from a familiar character. These things have kept the Fantasy Genera together for me.
I write of Vampires and Werewolves and other things that go bump in the night. Not because it is the popular thing to do but because I have had a visceral, deeply seeded, undiluted obsession with them for so long as I can remember. I devoured my first copy of Dracula when I was seven years old for Christ's sake. Granted I was too young to quite understand the literary meanings behind the story, but there was just something about it that resonated with me.
The idea if immortality. To have lifetimes to shape and reshape one's world. To make and mend mistakes. An opportunity to become the truest of self. To get "it" right. To learn anything the heart could desire or strive for, and have time enough to achieve it.
Time. That is something all preternatural creatures seem to have in abundance. Some write of it as something to be mourned, the strife of seeing loved ones that are not like them wither and die. But I have always seen it as a way to see and celebrate life on a grander scale. To suck the marrow from everything. To feel and experience in a heightened state of perpetual rebirth.
There is also a darkness that is more safely explored in the the paranormal genre that can not be looked at from the more contemporary lines without it becoming horror or taboo. The inevitable taking of lives. The animalistic urges of the human species, the drive to devour everything in its wake including each other is certainly in the forefront of many a Paranormal tale.
Demons devour souls, Vampires take lives and Werewolves in their basest of tales brutalize and savagely destroy towns and people. All are outcasts, left to hide on the skirts of society even as they are the greater of beings. In truth there is so mush more to the Paranormal Genre than many realize.
I think it's this deeper space that pulls me to it. The need to at least for me, to explore the worlds that shun and embrace such darkness all while condemning it to niches and flights of fancy. We are drawn to the dark because without it we would never recognize the light. The Paranormal Genre lets us explore those longing pangs of wanton taboo that we are afraid to uncover when the sun shines so brightly on us.
So I precariously toe the line because I feel that I can more easily write of us and our deepest desires and fears putting it under a safe shroud that can allow us all to embrace the kiss of the darkest flames without the burn.
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