 | |
| THEY ARE ON A MASTER QUEST. |
I think it's pretty safe to say that I need a huge heaping help of fantasy in any story I write. This goes hand in hand with my favorite genre to read, which is obviously fantasy. My problem though is that I am so fickle when it comes to reading fantasy - it's easy for me to get disenchanted or even more critical of stories in the fantasy realm than I would in any other classic genre. Such crazyness can probably be attributed to the fact that I've read so much epic/high/adventure/urban fantasy in my youth that I've hit burnout these days, and thus, only the super awesome fantasy stories can actually get by my eyes.
I was always the kind of little girl that enjoyed the ideas of going to a different place than where I lived, partly because I lived in rural Oregon and it was boring as snuff, and partly because I loved anything that activated my crazy-ass imagination.. Fantasy required an openness to things that simply did not exist in the world, like magic, mythos, and general other-worldly debauchery. It was also incredibly romantic which fit my equally incredibly romantic personality, even at tender elementary school ages. Books are not the only fantasy realms I enjoy - no big secret that I love fantasy video games and movies as well.
There's something about playing around with fantasy, whether it's entirely creating your own world or working within the boundaries of our own. Both of my series parlay one or the other, and this is another reason why I go back and forth on working on them - sometimes I want to work with familiarity, and other times I just want total free reign to say what the rules are and who's in charge.
Of course fantasy is not the only thing I write (or read). Sometimes, especially for short works, plain fiction is best. I also am a huge fan of writing romance as well, but that's one of the easy genres that mixes with just about all the others.
So on that note, even though this is a meme anyone can pick up, I want to ask the readers out there how they see themselves in this: do you often write the same genres that you read? If so, does that make you an even pickier reader of those genres? I want to know how cray-cray I am.
I guess I could say I do and don't write in the same genres I read. I typically read the canon and that's about it (now that I'm older). Not that surprising since I'm a lit scholar in the making and don't have a lot of time to read much else besides manga (hurr hurr). Most of my writing falls into the realm of realistic fiction, so in this way, yes, I *do* read what I write. It really does change the way I read, too, because I've started approaching everything from one hell of an intersectional point: Scholar/critic, author, and reader, usually in that order. I'm probably making life harder by doing so but lulz oh well.
ReplyDeleteThe picture changes when I switch to longer works of fiction, because my longer works aren't genre fiction in any way. Little bits and pieces from all genres come together to form my novels, which are primarily realistic fiction but still with elements of romance, science fiction, mystery, horror, etc. This is where the no comes in, because there aren't a lot of books that use this "strategy" in the same way. Yes, I know, all pieces incorporate a little of everything, but I'm not self-aggrandizing OR denigrating when I say it: My shit is all over the place. And, chances are, I'm too busy to read said books LOL.