At Dusk I Reign
Sage
The writer's lot is, by and large, a solitary one. It's not an activity that can ever truly be shared, even in collaboration. Ultimately every scribe works alone, his thoughts his only companion. Some people find this a challenge and come up with all kinds of ways to avoid doing the obvious. They spend uncounted hours researching minutiae, convinced that while the Devil may not be in the detail, he can at least be subdued and tamed through the application of, well, application.
This misses the point, I feel. Fantasy should never be bogged down by 'facts'. It's fantasy. Internal consistency is important, but slavishly transporting real-world methods into an unreal setting is, to my mind, an exercise in futility. I can't see the point of writing imaginative fiction if every move a character makes is filtered through a real-world lens.
Applying the mundane to the extraordinary, I contend, dilutes both the medium and the message. The fantastic should never conform to rules and regulations: it's too important for that.
Apart from when we're swept up in the tempest of a vivid dream, writing is the one time our minds are truly free, when the fetters of reality are loosened and our spirits can roam whither they will. It's a glorious feeling to be embraced by the whirlwind of creation, almost god-like. Of course it can be maddening and chaotic too, but that's just part of being human — we're maddening and chaotic creatures. At its best, though, the writer invests a part of his soul in each and every word; his life-force makes each page pulse with vitality, each sentence shine with an inner light.
However dull my wits, this is what I aspire to whenever I commit words to paper. I don't expect to succeed - I'm an uneducated pleb after all. But I try. Even if greatness is totally beyond my capabilities, it's something worth striving for - why continue breathing if transcendence is forever out of reach?
I believe great fiction to be on a par with the work of the Old Masters. Am I alone in my delusion?
This misses the point, I feel. Fantasy should never be bogged down by 'facts'. It's fantasy. Internal consistency is important, but slavishly transporting real-world methods into an unreal setting is, to my mind, an exercise in futility. I can't see the point of writing imaginative fiction if every move a character makes is filtered through a real-world lens.
Applying the mundane to the extraordinary, I contend, dilutes both the medium and the message. The fantastic should never conform to rules and regulations: it's too important for that.
Apart from when we're swept up in the tempest of a vivid dream, writing is the one time our minds are truly free, when the fetters of reality are loosened and our spirits can roam whither they will. It's a glorious feeling to be embraced by the whirlwind of creation, almost god-like. Of course it can be maddening and chaotic too, but that's just part of being human — we're maddening and chaotic creatures. At its best, though, the writer invests a part of his soul in each and every word; his life-force makes each page pulse with vitality, each sentence shine with an inner light.
However dull my wits, this is what I aspire to whenever I commit words to paper. I don't expect to succeed - I'm an uneducated pleb after all. But I try. Even if greatness is totally beyond my capabilities, it's something worth striving for - why continue breathing if transcendence is forever out of reach?
I believe great fiction to be on a par with the work of the Old Masters. Am I alone in my delusion?