Past Friday Free Thought Posts

I once told a former friend that I don't intend to be the next J.K. Rowling or J.R.R Tolken in my writing. To this she responded, "Why not? You should want to be the next great author otherwise your writing will suck and you'll never be good at anything. You need to aim big." On the one hand, I can see where she is coming from in her logic, but I still feel the same now as I did then. I don't want to be the next J.K.Rowling. The next J.R.R Tolken... C.S. Lewis... Brandon Sanderson... I don't want to be the next already existing famous author. This may sound weird to hear from an author, but the truth is, I didn't become one to be famous or popular in anyway. I didn't publish a book to be rich (although it would be nice to be able to pay the bills with my writings). So if I didn't want to be famous with my work, then why did I bother publishing? I published my work because I want to make it available to other people to read. I did it so that others can have something that is fun and clean and well written. I grew tired of the young adult fantasy genre being overrun with female protagonists that focus more on the love interest than the conflict of the story itself. The world could be ending around them, but as long as they had the bad boy all to themselves it didn't matter. I am tired of those. I'm also tired of post apocalyptic stories, harsh stories of war and violence and gore. I wanted something fun that feels real. I love stories of a character in reality that is thrown into an extraordinary circumstance. I love the Narnia wardrobe, the portal hippo in the Beyonders series, the owl delivering a letter of invitation to a fantastical wizarding school and so forth. These are the stories I love to read and I want to tell. So I did, so there is the wide, deep ocean with limitless possibilities. What if mers exist? What if they have their own society? What if I met one and find out I was extraordinary in my own way that I hadn't discovered yet? The real reward in writing, for me, is not surpassing others and reaching the podium of great writers (although that would be awesome if it actually happened). Its sharing a story that I'm passionate about and helping others to use their imagination. I often find that those who do things for the sake of popularity and not out of personal passion and enjoyment, wind up very disappointed. I guess the moral of my little story is: You don't have to be great by society's standards in order to do great things.

August 10, 2015

This is something that's long been a debate for as long as I've been writing. I'm a religious person and with being a religious person comes certain standards that I personally uphold to the best of my ability. With that said, here are some questions I've gotten on the subject before that I'm going to answer here:

• Does this at all reflect in my writing?

In certain ways, yes it does. There are just certain things that you will never find me writing about in my stories. Why is this? This is because I would like to be able to read the story myself and be comfortable doing that. I like to think as I write, if I were just a reader picking this story up from the library, would I still read it knowing what I know is in it? I want it to always be a resounding "yes".

• Are any of your characters the same religion as you?

No, none of them are and that is not because I am ashamed of my religion or the beliefs that I have. Its because I don't think its necessary to make that part of their character. In fact, when it comes to the humans, I don't establish any particular denomination to any of them. The closest you get to any sort of religion is through the merpeople and they are a society of their own. There are many fiction writers that share my faith that do the same thing. They just never establish it in the character profile because it does nothing to change the story. Or there are some authors that come up with entire religions of their own making to fit the world that their characters are in. That has nothing to do with being ashamed of their own faith and beliefs.

• Why don't you establish any sort of religion with your characters if religion plays a big role in your own life?

I don't establish any full out religion with my human characters because there are so many different people of different religions, beliefs and so forth that they may or may not live in their everyday lives. There are plenty of people that would claim to belong to a specific denomination, but don't follow what is taught in that denomination at all, or very little of it. Some people only go to church on Christmas and Easter. Some claim Christianity, but don't believe in organized Christianity and never set foot in a church outside of marriage and sometimes not even then. Long story short, there is such a great variety of people that are good people that make good choices to the best of their ability and I don't want to imply that only people of a certain denomination can be good. Nor do I want to create controversy because a character is a particular denomination, but they don't live their lives according to the doctrine of that particular religion (Even though there are plenty of people in reality who do just that).

• Why won't you make any of your characters the same religion as you? Don't you want your characters to uphold the same standards as you?

Again, a person can be a good person and share the same standards as myself or ideas without being the same religion as myself. This does not make them any less of a good person. Also, I am not perfect, I do not claim to be perfect and there are plenty of people I've met in my college days that made it very clear that we all have different opinions on how to live our lives according to the teachings of the same religion. Also, the characters are not me. I'm not writing about myself, I'm writing as though I know these characters personally and they are their own person. Just like I have friends who don't agree with every single standard that I live up to, same with my characters. I want to establish that reality that we are not all the same, but that is all right. You don't need to have the same faith in order to be a good person. Finally... Very often I hear others bash on authors of certain faiths whose books to do not reflect the same standards as their faith. Does it make an author a bad person because their characters don't reflect their personal standards? No, I don't think so. Unless the story is specifically supposed to reflect their beliefs then its just as it is, a work of fiction. Its a different world, different people, different ideas. Do not assume that the characters reflect the faith of the creator in fiction or you will be greatly disappointed. That being said! Do not bash the author for the bad decisions of another individual who took that author's story and perverted it in fanfiction. Fanfiction does NOT reflect the views and opinions of the original creator of the work they are basing their story around. Happy Reading!

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