It's all just fantasy to me.....

One of the assistants at my “Plot Bunny Breeding and Rearing Centre” (aka one of my readers, who selflessly permits me to bounce ideas off her and who gets to read my scribblings for small bribes of chocolate/alcohol), raised an eyebrow and muttered at me today “you don’t subscribe to the write only what you experience yourself school of writing do you?”

Well, er, no, definitely not, in fact, can you imagine anything more boring? I can’t. 

My usual writing involves elements of fantasy, though I can write contemporary, but even then chances are (hum, ok, actually, not definitely, say about an 80% chance) that it’s not going to be anything I’ve any personal experience of… this is what research is for surely? (and research can lead you to do some very strange things… *ahem* drinking a bottle of beer and then spending 20 minutes sucking on a vibrator covered with a strawberry flavoured condom before going to bed because I wanted to describe the taste in a character's mouth the morning after for example)

Ok, so you can’t research some of the things that my head comes up with as, let’s face it, they don’t really exist (I’m talking marauding big cats, colonies of elves protecting the Peak District and intermarriage of races causing strange and magical powers here…. If anyone has evidence of these things, please send it this way!).  Yes, there are usually some myths and legends (preferably local ones) wound in, and I’ll happily mix in some fairy tales and a smattering of historical knowledge, but much of it does come from my head and for me that’s part of the fun of the writing.

Then I pointed out that there is a correlation between what I write and what I read, which lead to some boggle-eyed amazement… whilst I read anything that is put in front of me, if it’s a work of fiction then despite its designated genre it is pretty much guaranteed that in one way or another, to me, it’s going to be fantasy…

Just looking at some of my more frequently read books……I am never going to be part of a sweeping historical drama, nor will I go to school in a 1940’s boarding school, I won’t be a sword wielding hero (heroines are very few and far between in epic fantasy – there are some authors who write them brilliantly but still not enough!), I won’t be a private investigator or detective, pretty sure I won’t be a murderer or other major criminal.  I will never be involved with werewolves, vampires or any other paranormal creature you can think of, I won’t be in an M/M romance, and most probably not in a M/F one for that matter …

If my life were a book there’d be a few interesting moments, but the rest of it might as well be blank pages of boredom!  No, my imagination is a much more fun place to play.

So now, I shall go feed the plot bunny responsible for the new set of voices that arrived in my head the other night, which are telling me the story of a far too knowledgeable grandmother, an abandoned, lonely and insecure werewolf, a dominant and brash tree surgeon, some uncaring parents and a young twink with an attitude problem, a chip on his shoulder that is big enough sink the Titanic and a favourite red hoodie…….

This song title reminds me of writing.... the truth is mundane, something beautiful is infinitely preferable.