July 2011
160 posts
on making art, and writing, and speculative fiction
So i literally just had an epiphany. You’re all going to laugh at me, but whatever.
Every six months or so I become seized by the longing to Make Art and then fall into a tailspin of self-doubt and discouragement and never write down a word.
I love to write. I just love finding the way to say something that expresses it exactly. But I think that whenever I start doing real writing and Making Art that it’s going to be serious art about the moral struggles of normal, ordinary people, etc. Then I become seized by my inability to effectively characterize or plot such struggles, and I abandon writing again for a while
But here’s the thing: that’s…that’s not really where my heart is. My heart and soul have been and always will be in speculative fiction. Insisting that I can only write serious person fiction is crippling the very engine of my creativity before I even begin. It also privileges certain kinds of writing over others; it’s grounded in the assumption that there is “serious” fiction and then there is genre fiction. I always reject that distinction, and I have been known to drunkenly monologue about it if you ask me the wrong question. I think genre stories are a fantastic theatre for the working out personal moral struggles, with the added bonus of world building. and yet I have allowed myself to block off the one thing i love most, have the most experience with and feel the most strongly about as “not legitimate.” Let me say this very clearly: fuck that.
So i’m going to make a promise to myself. I’m not saying I’m going to go out write now and write ~my great fantasy novel. But I’m going to allow myself to think about these things, to entertain and cultivate these ideas, these ways of thinking. I’m going to world-build and character-build and let myself daydream. I’m going to write it down and think seriously about it. Because these things are what creativity means to me. If I never actually produce anything fully formed, I’m okay with that. But I will be engaged in the act of being creative in a way that is meaningful to me, which is something I have neglected for far too long.
