This is no time for analysis. I ate too much stuffing to be capable of it. I write Fantasy because I love it. Why else? If any of you out there have particular questions about Fantasy, or my approach to the subject, or want to see future columns dedicated to particular aspects of fantasy writing, …
Tag: Fantasy
The Writing Life: A Podcast, and Distraction versus Discipline (The Last Jedi Edition)
So, for any of you missed it, here is the podcast of my interview with Jerry Fabyanic talking about my book, The Thief and The Demon. I had a great time, and would once again like to thank Jerry, and KYGT-FM, the Goat radio station. I had a great time, and hope to return to …
Why I Write Fantasy: Ideas, Imagination and the Power of “What if?”
Last week I discussed the allure of creating worlds, the joy of it often being in the freedom it grants you as a writer to shape the drama of your story from the ground up, and have the universe in which your narrative takes place become, in a sense, an active character in that story. …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: Ideas, Imagination and the Power of “What if?”
Why I Write Fantasy: The Joy of Creating Worlds
Writing fantasy fiction is a lot of fun. I’ve always enjoyed it because you get to imagine anything you want, and then find ways to make it work. I mean, a lot of the time it would be much easier to not bother with the making it work part and just throw stuff on the …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: The Joy of Creating Worlds
Why I Write Fantasy: The Yearning
When first I wrote fantasy, I yearned for escape, to be lost in worlds of fantasy myself, away from what I perceived as the misery of my own existence at that time. Then I wrote because I yearned to write as well as my heroes, to be my heroes, use their ideas, their motifs, and …
The Writing Life: Aiming High Part 3 – Striving for More
So in this series I’ve described what aiming high means for me, and why I believe that missing the target I set myself (or yourself) isn’t failure. In aiming high, I’m also setting myself challenges in order to improve as a writer. This seems insane, because writing is tough enough on its own, and it …
Continue reading The Writing Life: Aiming High Part 3 – Striving for More
Why I Write Fantasy: The First Ambitions
So last week I wrote about my first intentions when writing fantasy stories. Some, like the youthful need to ‘borrow’ bits of my favourite books and add them to my own in a wholly unsubtle way, have been abandoned as bad practice. Others, like the fundamental need to write, and to share my imaginings, have …
Why I Write Fantasy: Early Intentions
I don’t know about anyone else, but I started writing stories because I had to. It, being a writer, was what I wanted to be, but more importantly, and far more primal, was the need to tell stories. I needed to write them down, the tales that flowed in fractured circles in my head; the …
Why I Write Fantasy: Honouring Influences Without Being a Slave to Them.
I think many writers spend some time forging their own writing identity: the what it is they want to write, and how they wish to present it to others. For many a young writer there is a phase of aping the things they love, and it can be a very conscious process. It certainly was …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: Honouring Influences Without Being a Slave to Them.
Why I Write Fantasy: The Travel Begins at Home Edition
All writing, it seems to me, begins in your own head. Sometimes it will be written as a strong spontaneous reaction to outside stimulus – protest songs, polemical essays, critical feuds, a satirical impulse to start telling a particular story in order to hit a particular target, but for me, the story starts as a …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: The Travel Begins at Home Edition
Roderick T. Macdonald 