Brian! Is It Really You? Or Am I Making It All Up? (Part III)
Is there a difference between the Imaginal World and the world of fantasy? If so, then how do you know when you’re interacting in the Imaginal World and when you’re in the fantasy world?
This might seem fairly unimportant, but it’s not: it speaks directly to the question of whether these characters are real or “figments of our imagination.”
( This is my current understanding. )
This might seem fairly unimportant, but it’s not: it speaks directly to the question of whether these characters are real or “figments of our imagination.”
( This is my current understanding. )
I think that the line between fantasy and the Imaginal World is fuzzier than you suggest. Yes, I think you're right about this. It's tough to try to explain something without "pinning it down" and making it too simplistic. I had initially thought that somehow they were completely different, but even as I was writing this yesterday I began to realize that it wasn't nearly that simple.
You know, I do realize that one wouldn’t need to try to explain this stuff at all-one could just put it down to “creativity,” or “wayward fingers,” which is how it’s been explained pretty much all along. But the reason I do it is that my own experiences of the inhabitants of the Imaginal World have been so striking that I can’t just ignore them, and I can’t write them off as products of my own fantasy. I sure appreciate your willingness to humor me on this.
I laughed all the way through your description of how you wrote that chapter-way too funny! I loved how you “seriously considered buying” one of the toys! I get a catalog of sex toys once in a while-cannot recall (or will not admit) how I got on their mailing list-and you’re so right! Some of them seem like you’d have to have at least two extra hands and a college degree to use them! LOL!!
All I can say is that as soon as my fictional Justin started shedding his clothes...and that too was unplanned...the rest of the narrative flowed. It wasn't writing, it was typing. Is this the kind of thing you mean when you say you “transcribed a conversation” between Gale and Randy?
… if I did tap into the Imaginal World, it was only because I put myself in a place where I was vulnerable to it. Exactly right, IMO.
…How important is readiness and would such experiences occur less frequently without such readiness? While doing one's laundry, for instance, or chopping vegetables, rather that writing? Could you say more about that, please? In my experience (and maybe this is what you’re getting at) “readiness” is all-important, because if we’re not open to the possibility of interactions with the Imaginal World, they’ll either not happen or they’ll go unnoticed.
I’d love to hear more about how you “stumbled across Gram.” She’s one of my favorite characters in your stories.
Again, FanSee, I so much appreciate your taking the time to respond to this.
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Kai:Is this the kind of thing you mean when you say you “transcribed a conversation” between Gale and Randy?
Storytime: In my fangirl capacity, I hear all the recent rumors about Gale-in-The-Unit, Gale-as-Wyatt-Earp, then Gale-the-Government-Agent, and my heart flutters in my chest. Then I learn that Simon flew out to spend this weekend on the Coast with Randy. Randy in L.A., Gale in L.A., Simon on his way West, Randy and Gale in bed. From that point the dialogue wrote itself. I hold no brief for the authenticity of the language of either character...to come even close, I'd have to listen intently to as many hours of their conversation as I have of Brian's and Justin's...but I knew what my fictional constructs would say. No struggle, no rewriting (and I adore rewriting), just straight typing.
You can read the result if I can send it to you privately. Chering tells me it's not yet ready for prime time, and indeed it isn't.
I’d love to hear more about how you “stumbled across Gram.” She’s one of my favorite characters in your stories.
I'm sure I've mentioned this before to you, but writing fanfic is a lead pipe cinch. I never have to describe a character or a setting (for the most part), and I can advance the plot simply by referring to a typical expression or gesture: "Justin blinked once," or "Brian rolled his lips inward." My only job is to keep my characters consistent with canon and, in fact, I find that when I do stray, my readers manage to ascribe my error to canon, too. (Very kind and supportive people, my readers.) So inventing an original character is...or might be...moving my creativity to a new level. Only that's not how it was with Gram.
I'm vacuuming my living room...not a mentally challenging job...and thinking about a fic I had read recently in which Brian was subject to unremitting uncertainty, attack, and injury, and I'm thinking, I don't think so. Brian would have developed multiple personality syndrome or become a sociopath, not become the high-functioning individual he is. He's got to have had a port in the storm. And there was Gram: 60-ish, short and solid, gruff, insensitive, determined, and protective. A little bulldog who's mission in life is to shelter Brian without ever admitting to him that he is the light of her life. Don't want to spoil him, you know. One minute Gram didn't exist, the next I knew exactly what she looked like, how she acted, and what she would say. At the same time, I've never felt the need to insert any special descriptions of her into the narrative or to explain her background. (After all, you don't know the back story of anyone you meet for the first time, do you?) She always seemed so complete to me that I expected that she would be equally complete for a reader. Certainly none of my very polite readers have ever said to me, "Who the hell is this Gram person?"
On the other hand, I also had a new neighbor move in next door to the Kinneys who was going to offer Brian a refuge, but she...and her husband and new baby...just faded away. It wasn't that they didn't fit the story, they just never became real enough to write. Gram kind of crowded them out of the story. FanSee
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You can contact me privately via LJ email: kaipohonea@livejournal.com. Give it a try--I tested it and it seems to work OK. I'd give you my regular email but it has my actual name (horrors!) and I don't want to post that here, ya know....
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