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Writing from where?
It used to be, at least in America, that writers often wrote from their heritage. If you were Irish, you tended to go that direction; if you were Jewish, that was important. And it made sense, especially in early 20th century America: everyone was struggling to define themselves as new, yet familiar. Hence, everyone is a (something)-American. What’s weird about me (and, I think, quite a few people of my generation) is that I have very little in the way of cultural identification. My mom grew up in Quebec, but she’s a mix of French, German, and First Nation (the Innu tribe). Most people think she’s Spanish, or Greek, or…
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(Dis)illusion – on magic
When I was young, the pursuit of magic was a daily adventure. I was nearly obsessed with tapping into some unknown ability, like a Jedi, that when unleashed would undoubtedly solve my problems. Of course, my love of fantasy fueled this preoccupation. I saturated my imagination with books that reiterated my convictions: magic was possible, it was just a matter of finding it. At about the age of twelve, I started writing what could (technically at least) be considered novels (though nothing was ever finished). And magic was everywhere; I remember how intoxicating it was to create a world for the first time, drawing a map, and developing magic. Of…
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Ringing the WIP.
I’m working on something right now, something I started during my horrific cold the last few weeks. I’m purposely taking a bit of a break from AGC (no worries, Alderpod listeners; I have plenty of chapters yet to read, so y’all won’t notice the difference) to work on this WIP, which is a project I’ve actually been contemplating since I started my undergraduate career a decade ago (how did ten years pass?!). At that point, I’d written thousands of pages of writing, but had yet to complete a novel; that came years later, with the end of the YA novel, Peter of Windbourne (unpublished… may never see the light of…
