Writing fantasy

It’s me, Cris.

Excuse the familiarity, but I want to believe that you have read my very first debut novel, The Lady Wind, and I’ll just assume that you already have before you get here. Even if you haven’t, you’re welcome to stay! I have a lot to talk about, and this one is a one-way conversation, so I can only hope that it’s interesting.

 

Now, I’ve written a lot of stuff over the course of my life, but I have never really sat down and completed any one of the many stories I’ve written. I’ve procrastinated through hundreds of different write-ups, and I’ve left each of those projects with faded inspiration and a lackluster quality to…well…everything.

At least, I think so when I read it again, hoping to pick it up, but I find that my mind just doesn’t gel with it the way it did when I wrote it. I tell myself I’ll take notes this time and follow a strict, well-thought-out rhythm to the story that makes it super, super easy for me to keep track of everything.

I tell myself a lot of things. All the time, in fact.

 

So, believe me, it was just as much a surprise to me as it was to anyone who knows me that I managed to complete this one. It wasn’t that I didn’t try or that it was effortless. I just…didn’t lose that spark. Inspiration comes and goes, but I think this time, it stayed for long enough that I was able to do this.

That’s not to say I skipped on the organization. In fact, I was more organized this time than I’d ever been before. I’ll go ahead and say—at the risk of bragging—that I passed the writer’s test. I believe that any good writer doesn’t let writer’s block keep him down or away from his work. Granted, I’m not a novelist by day, but I’m also not someone who I’d call a stranger to this art form.

 

So why would someone like me choose fantasy? Another burning question, and this time, on my mind. Some others might ask the same of me, and even if all the answers I ever give to this question are honest, I’ll have a different thing to say each time. My interests span across genres rather than stay in them, and I believe that Fantasy was the only course of action. Mixing that bit of ‘dark stuff’ and a few elements of gothic happenings just came naturally. Maybe I was inspired by something, and maybe it just came through in the writing. Whatever it was, it clicked, and I wrote until I had finished rather than until it stopped clicking.

 

And it didn’t really stop clicking until I had finished, either. I think that the failure to organize your notes, leave hundreds of stories half-written, and make up your mind to write a story but not be able to be a rite of passage. One for all writers. It’s not failure, not to me. It’s the learning process. You slowly learn your limitations and your boundaries. You learn what you like to write about.

You even learn about yourself. I know I did.

 

I also learned that I take a lot of inspiration from a lot of stories but far less so from those I think are the best. A lot more books and media influenced me than I thought, and they really influenced my writing, too. I won’t say what exactly because my mind cannot pinpoint it, but I know what feels familiar and what doesn’t.

Coming up with plot elements is easy, really. The difficult thing is making them interesting. In fantasy, regardless of the sub-genre you go with, there is freedom when it comes to writing about worlds. Do I want there to be a faction with magic? I can do that. I have to account for it in the writing, but I can do that.

And isn’t that what true freedom is? The action and their consequences are all yours. There is as much protection from consequences as you make it, and in writing about worlds, all I have to do is keep track of what is and isn’t possible. Some people will say that magic and witches and all that gives you free rein to do what you want and not care about rules, but almost every single author will disagree. It doesn’t put in constraints, but it also forces you into a corner of your own making.

Like I said, consequences.

But that’s the fun, isn’t it?! Not to mention that I put myself among other authors now and call myself the same. I don’t know if it is like that, but I can say it.

I’m Cris Danai, writer, novelist, author, or just two of those things at least. I think I’ll have to write a bit more novels to be a novelist.

Feels good to say it.