Here we are again, wrestling with doubts! This week I’m going to highlight another way that doubt can worm its way into a writer’s psyche: the comparison game. By now, I hope you are all familiar with my cast of doubt-related characters: General Zod, Sally, and the Toad. Visit here for the primer! Over many …
Continue reading The Writing Life: Doubts Part 3: Losing At The Comparison Game
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve looked at morality in fantasy writing and world building. This week I’m going to look at what kinds of things a moral framework or viewpoint could be based upon, what people may experience as the root of their morality. In fantasy, as in the real world, there can …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: A Question of Morality, Part 3: Upon What Authority?
Last week I talked about the primal doubt all writers face: the “am I good enough?” (AIGE?) question. Unfortunately it is not alone in the doubt-riddled ecosystem, and other forms of doubt can sabotage progress even when you have managed to ignore AIGE? long enough to get some writing done, and even *gasp* have enjoyed …
Continue reading The Writing Life: Doubts Part 2: The Perfect as Enemy of the Good, or Great
Last week I chatted about the idea that morality in fantasy fiction is often either taken for granted, (painted in simple terms of big evil versus plucky underdog good) or oddly out of step. (Why would 20th and 21st century Western morals be the norm in a variety of quasi-medieval settings?) I also mentioned that …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: A Question of Morality, Part 2: Beyond Good and Evil
Last week I talked about dissatisfaction, and in the process mentioned its big brother, doubt. Doubt manifests for writers in quite a few subtle guises, so I’m going to dedicate a column a week for a while (with potential interruptions to allow folk to recover!) looking at how doubt can sneak into a writer’s life. …
Continue reading The Writing Life: Doubts Part 1: Am I Good Enough?
Today I had the pleasure of talking with Jesper Schmidt about morality in fantasy world building, one part in an extended series of discussions on this topic that are well worth watching. He has a great YouTube channel dedicated to all things fantasy writing related – check it out here! He also helps to run …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: A Question of Morality, Part 1
Writers, it is often said, are their own worst critics. I take this to mean that writers, and artists in general, tend to be very harsh on themselves, though it could of course mean they are simply poor judges of their own work, and are incapable of accurately critiquing their own output by virtue of …
Continue reading The Writing Life: Dealing with Dissatisfaction
So two weeks ago I talked about the infinite possibilities in fantasy, then last week I discussed why it can sometimes seem repetitive, at least in terms of setting. These things would appear to be contradictory, but I think can resolve quite easily, even as I believe we will see new authors pushing or shattering …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: The Blind Faith Edition
Ursula K. Le Guin died this week. I read The Earthsea Trilogy (as was) a few times in my youth, and loved it. I really should get around to reading the complete Earthsea fictions, and of course many of her other works often referenced in this week of obituaries and commentaries mourning her passing. In …
Continue reading The Writing Life: Commodity Versus Art, the Eternal Challenge.
Last week I talked about the infinite possibilities offered by the fantasy genre, but buried in there was the nagging question: “Why then is so much of fantasy writing so similar?” I think any reader of fantasy over the last thirty years knows what I’m talking about, but let’s do a quick recap without falling …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: The Why Is So Much Of It So Similar? Edition
Roderick T. Macdonald 