Writing Fiction

As a reader, I have evolved (or perhaps grown) from reading almost exclusively fiction into a much more balanced (and more mature?) diet of non-fiction and fiction, with some poetry thrown in for good measure. In short, variety. I have watched (or perhaps actively participated in--because I can hardly be simply a spectator) my writing develop in a similar arc, as I have come to enjoy, not simply endure, writing essays and articles.

This transition is in many ways bittersweet, since I harbor an enduring sense of nostaligia for the past, or at least my own past. If there was something I was passionate about in the early days of my youth, I feel an inescapable urge, a sense of duty, even, to feel passionate about the same thing, even though I am not exactly the same person. This tendency extends to most aspects of my interest, but writing in particular, perhaps because writing is (so far) the most enduring of my passions.

When I was younger all I wanted to write was fiction, and maybe a little poetry on the side. My favorite authors were Gail Carson Levine, Lucy Maud Montgomery and Emily Dickinson. (From whence I have now graduated to Shannon Hale, Jane Austen, and Walt Whitman) I was a devoted fantasy series junkie, and devoured Narnia, Harry Potter, the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, and a myriad of other titles multiple times. After I had graduated these series (with the exception of Harry Potter, which I have yet to graduate), I felt compelled to move on to their counterparts for teenagers. The most logical next step was Tolkein. I began the Fellowship of the Ring, and pretended to like it very much. In reality, I was a little turned off by Tolkein's heady descriptions and desperate plots (which involved very little...if any...action...other than the occasional battle to break up the monotony of constant...forward...travel...)I had previously made an attempt at the Hobbit, which had failed. Nevertheless, I waded my way through both the Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, slowly and painfully, because I felt compelled to. In those days, as perhaps it still is now, you were considered a fraud of a fantasy fan if you had not read LOTR. I wanted, so desperately, to be that knowledgable fantasy freak, that I kept at it. It took those two volumes and the first half of The Return of the King, over the space of 2-4 years,m for me to realize that, LOTR really wasn't my thing. Once I did, the realization was somewhat liberating.

You see, I, like everyone else, had always subscribed to the common vision of the "perfect" fantasy series: a trilogy, full of epic battles, elvish wisdom, and pages and pages of endless, verbiose description. This model, originated by J.R.R. Tolkein, has spawned a mass of imitators, and it was this realization that finally turned me off of supposedly "hard-core" fantasy, from the Inheritance Trilogy (Quartet...whatever) to those books by Garth Nix and Philip Pullman. Yech. Once I realized that this wasn't my thing, I had to face the implications on my storytelling. All of my planned novels yet to be written had, of course, followed the Tolkein model. With no model, I was left to my own devices.

So I gave up on writing fantasy novels and turned to nonfiction.

Of course, my transition was not as absolute as suggested by the above sentence. I still held on to my various ideas for novels, rearranging them, paring details, formulating mental outlines that strayed from the fantasy vein. I wasn't sure what genre they were--fantasy, fiction, romance, sci-fi, historical--and the truth was, it didn't really matter. This notion and once excited and liberated me. But then I began highschool and became far too busy for such paltry pursuits as novel writing. I was, among other things, enrolled in an AP English language and Comp class, which opened my eyes to the numerous treasures that lay among the trove of nonfiction. I had been writing articles for the D.E. for years before, of course, but I never found them satisfying in and of themselves; novel-writing was where my true ambition lay. But this class brought to fruition my developing suspicion that nonfiction was actually fun to read an write and, furthermore, that I might have an actual talent for it, as opposed to fiction, which had always been a sort of mandatory struggle for me. Talking about real things was less stressful, and meant that I could include mainly description--description of facts--rather than the action which novel-writing required. I was converted.

So my ambitions had rearranged themselves: now, instead of the next Chris Paolini, I wanted to be the next, oh, I don't know. Journalists and nonfiction writers tend to keep their identities fairly seperate from their writing, and that was one detail I liked. Somehow, having to argue your personal opinion--or express the opinions of others, meant that you had to be somehow less invested in your prosaic creation. I could live my days out happily as an anonymous voice on the editorial pages, or an inflammatory blogger, or, that wonder of media, the moderate journalist. Either way, I would be happy to hone my vocabulary to fit the scholastic tone, escape the flowery pretentions of my fictional efforts.

But there has remained a part of me, the part that succumbed to Twilight mania and still retains a streak of pretension in her writing, that always wanted to write that perfect fantasy novel. And it was she who won when, in early October, I began hearing mentions of the infamous NaNoWriMo--National Novel Writing Month, where millions of amateurs the world around attempt to complete a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. It was she who trampled on my half-hearted protests that, no, I didn't have enough time, the whole thing was ridiculous, I am solely a writer of inspiration!Blah!Blah!Blah! Writers of fiction, here I come.