In my attempt (successful, so far) to avoid finishing Shadowpaint, I worked a little on The Girl in the Mirror (a Gothic narrative poem), and I realized something that I’d sort of noticed before but hadn’t paid much attention to: without external constraints, I naturally gravitate toward fantasy and the supernatural in my writing.
Why do I feel almost guilty about this?
Two reasons, I think. First, I’m a Mormon, and we believe in truth. Truth meaning what really is. And fantasy is, by definition almost, what is not. :) This argument doesn’t hold up very well, though, because Mormonism started in our day and age when a boy saw an angel. And as far as the world’s concerned, that’s fantasy. Our temples have an aura of mystery about them (to the outsider) that easily lends itself to imaginative speculations of the fantastical sort. And does writing stories about stuff that never happened — and never could happen — somehow distract us from the goal of becoming like God and getting back to heaven? The tiny little Puritan in me says yes, but to be honest, fairy tales and other fantasy stories actually bolster my belief in God — who is unseen. I don’t see any irony here. Even though I still feel that nagging sense of self-conscious guilt.
The second reason is our modern worship of science and the scientific method. What’s real is what matters, they say. And fantasy isn’t real. Again, tales of fancy stretch my imagination, fueling my creative drive, and that has real-world benefits all over the place (even financially).
The point is, I love fantasy — stories where things happen, in ways they don’t usually happen in our experience — and it’s time to stop being self-conscious about it. Because I sure as heck am not going to stop writing it. :) (Which isn’t to say that I don’t write realistic works — all of my plays so far have been solidly planted in reality, for example. But it’s ten times easier for me to get excited about a work that toes the line between reality and faërie.)