Feb 20 2009
Have Plunged, Must Come Up for Air
This week I did something I haven’t done in quite a while: I plunged into a fantasy world. Obeying my sudden urge to actually read the book I was supposed to review for the CSFF Blog Tour (that’s Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy, if you were wondering), I bought two fantasy novels on a whim and then ploughed through them in three days. If you read as fast as I did as a teenager, that probably sounds like an intolerably long time, but I’ve slowed down since I started editing — and I still have work to do. So reading like that meant staying up really late at night and eating all my meals while buried in pages.
I am, for the most part, glad I did it. I’ll give a disclaimer here: as several other bloggers remarked, these books are for mature teens and adults — they deal with some adult themes and have their very violent moments. But they’re also rich in theme and imagery, with taut, skillfull writing of the kind that lends itself to being quoted in my writing lessons.
The thing about plunging into a fictional world, though, is that eventually you have to come back up. If the book was a good one, it will leave marks. My vocabulary is always a little altered after I’ve been reading, and I’ll be hearing character voices in my head for weeks. Catch me thinking, and I may well be thinking about some place that doesn’t really exist. But ideally, good fiction will do more than leave marks. It will actually influence the ways we live our real lives.
When I read, I want to come away with a more profound understanding of who I am, what this world is, who God is. I want to come away loving my family and friends more, hating evil with a greater passion, longing for beauty with a sharp edge. In general, fiction affects me this way far more than nonfiction does. That’s the power of story.
Judging from the comments on my Cyndere’s Midnight posts, I’m guessing that some of you have come away from fiction in some measure changed. I hope so. And as you write, may God bless your work with the power to change others as well.
See you next week!
What I read DEFINITELY influences what and how I write. But you’re correct – “… ideally, good fiction will do more than leave marks. It will actually influence the ways we live our real lives.” And in this is found the REAL strength and beauty of fiction to a writer – to “influence the ways we live out real lives” and thus the way we write, as we write with greater depth and maturity having LIVED, have been influenced.
What an awesome responsibility – that of possessing and exercising “the power to change others” through the weaving of stories and the power of fiction!