Stepping Stone

Franz Kafka

“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.” — Franz Kafka

My dad wrote a rather lengthy novel while he was in college, but you wouldn’t know anything about it, because he put it in a three ring binder and left it on a shelf for nearly two decades. I discovered it while being an over curious seventeen year old, rooting around the garage. There was a title page, a title I can’t at the moment recall, but I remember that it was fantastic. Acknowledging that it was a manuscript, I asked my dad if I could read it (never read someone’s writing without first asking; I know that’s a pet-peeve of my own). He said it wasn’t good. He wrote it in college. Had a chick type it up on a typewriter because he couldn’t type (he still can’t type). Said that I would be bored within a chapter.

But I wasn’t.

There were a few plot holes (i.e. the dragon changed sizes depending on where in the story you were), and some sensual bits that I am not ashamed to have avoided at all costs because I have zero desire to know anything about that side of my father. Overall though, it was fantastic. It was truly something that could only have been written by a Dungeon and Dragons’ Dungeon Master that had become far too enthused. I still remember the plot well, it was just so enrapturing. I read the 700+ pages within two days.

All that to say this, there’s always fads in literature. I remember getting so fed up with YA dystopian novels in the early 2010s, especially with The Giver and Hunger Games series so popularized. It seemed like any new work was just another dystopian work that had been rushed to publication in order to fill some need they felt teenagers wanted. Tolkien wrote fantasy when it wasn’t something anyone really wanted, and he wasn’t all that popular until his books were piratized in the US. Now, one would be hard-pressed to find someone who has never heard of the name J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis.

I’ve worried in the past about what I write. How could be received well if the world was already so over-saturized with YA fantasy? What if no one reads my work? Honestly though, I love writing, and for that, I do. If my work never gets picked up, so be it, at least I’ll be able to say that I wrote something. Coming up on my tenth year of NaNoWriMo, I feel more prepared than ever to be writing. I love fantasy, so I’ll continue writing fantasy because that’s my love.

Yours truly,
Estelle Noire