With HUGE apologies to Liesl, here is her guest post.
True Stories
When I first started writing, I resisted fantasy. I had
always loved reading the genre, but somehow I got the idea that in order to be
taken seriously as a writer I needed to write serious stuff, things that really
could happen or really did happen. True Stories. Admittedly, I also thought
this would somehow be easier. (This is not true at all, by the way.) Even
though I enjoyed fantasy, I personally didn’t think I was creative enough to
write well in the genre. All the fantasy books I had read just seemed so
imaginative and beyond my own capability.
Kirby Larson was one of my first writing teachers. While I
studied with her, everything I wrote was realistic fiction—no magic, no fairies
or elves or dragons. (Oh wait. I vaguely remember one story with a flying
scooter. It was so awful, maybe that’s why I didn’t think I could write
fantasy!) Kirby was an excellent mentor who encouraged me and helped me develop
my skill as a writer, but it wasn’t until I finished up my class with Kirby
that I considered dipping my toes in fantasy, and a fairy tale no less. I told
myself that it was merely an experiment. I’d just try it out for fun, but not
feel pressure to take it seriously.
To my surprise, the more I wrote this little fairytale, the
more I felt my imagination and creativity blossom. I also began to see how
important and worthwhile fantasy and fairy tales really are, for even though
the stories are full of the impossible, they speak symbolically of things that
are true. Fantasy offers another lens to view truths that can’t always be
proven, only shown. This is at the heart of all fiction, realistic or fantasy. This
is what I hope I accomplished in my story of Rump. It’s not real, but I hope it’s true.
Learn more about Liesl at her website; click here to read a great interview with Liesl and her editor, Katherine Harrison.
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