The Courage to Create

Apologies for not getting this entry up in time yesterday. Which means I'll be double posting today for C and D so let's get right to it.

C is for Creation.

The heart of man is not compound of lies,

but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,

and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,

man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.

Disgraced he may be, yet is not dethroned,

and keeps the rags of lordship one he owned,

his world-dominion by creative act:

not his to worship the great Artefact,

man, sub-creator, the refracted light

through whom is splintered from a single White

to many hues, and endlessly combined

in living shapes that move from mind to mind.

Though all the crannies of the world we filled

with elves and goblins, though we dared to build

gods and their houses out of dark and light,

and sow the seed of dragons, 'twas our right

(used or misused). The right has not decayed.

We make still by the law in which we're made.

                                      ~J.R.R. Tolkien

You might guess from the name of my blog that creation through storytelling, or sub-creation as J.R.R. Tolkien put it, is a subject close to my heart. Perhaps above all others it is the real reason why I write: I am compelled to create.

Tolkien coined the term "sub-creation" to express the idea that we mere mortals have an intrinsic desire to create through our arts because we were made in the image of our creator. Like him, we want to bring things into being. Unlike him, it is only from our imaginations that we can do this. So we are not creators, since we have nothing to work with that was not created by God, but we are sub-creators.

Tolkien also saw fantasy as the best medium for sub-creation. Another term he developed was mythopoesis, by which he meant the creative act of inventing imaginary worlds with detailed mythologies. This is the closest, perhaps, that man can come to mimicking God's creative act. For though the things that we invent have no physical substance in the world, one only needs to look at the lasting impact that Middle-earth has had on millions of fans of Tolkien's stories (including me) to see that Tolkien's creations have achieved reality in the souls of those who love them.

This humble blogger hopes to one day become a true sub-creator and mythopoet in the same tradition that Tolkien began.

Why I'm Worldbuilding and Not Writing

It wasn't so long ago that I didn't consider myself a writer. Oh, I've always made attempts at writing stories here and there. I've written some fanfiction pertaining to my experiences playing The Lord of the Rings Online. But for a long time I considered it just a hobby, something I did because I couldn't help myself. I never for a moment considered that I might be able to write a real book that I could actually have published. My husband would tell me my writing was good and my fanfiction received good feedback, but publication, actually selling my writing, just wasn't even on my horizon.

That changed this last fall. Before, I considered my story ideas to be pretty amateur. I'm not sure what the catalyst was, but sometime this past fall the story in my head began to develop into something bigger and brighter than it had ever been before. I conceived what I like to think is a fairly brilliant story idea. Everything had been vague concepts and images floating around in my head before, but now! Now it began to take on shape and life. Now I thought I had something that I wanted to share with the world.

Having played around with blogging through LOTRO for about a year previous, I decided right away to jump into blogging again and chronicle my journey as a writer and I began first the long but exhilarating task of worldbuilding. You see, I'm an epic fantasy reader/writer through and through and  the secondary world where my stories happen is very important to me.

But while exploring the writing blogosphere and learning more about publication one message hit me over and over: Write! Write! WRITE! Get that story down on paper! Now! Get it published! Now! You're not a writer unless you're writing!

Sad to say, I took it to heart and ever since I've been making blundering attempts to get my story written before it's too late. To be a writer. And it hasn't been working. The story just isn't coming together.

But I've realized something. I don't want to be a writer. I don't want to be one of those authors who are oft quoted because of their skill at putting words together in meaningful ways. I don't care to be one of those authors who are remembered for their poetic or sharp or efficient prose or anything to do with prose. I don't even want to be known for brilliant characterization or exhilarating plots or complex structure or stirring description or genuine dialogue or any other literary technique. I don't care are about literary technique.

Let's be honest here. J.R.R. Tolkien was the father of modern fantasy and his books are among the most popular in the world. But is he known for any of the above things? Is he remembered for his technique? I'll admit that there are very few lines I can quote out of his books considering how much I love them. No. What Tolkien is remembered for is his sub-creation. He created a secondary world so detailed and so complex and so real that people can't forget it. People spend their lives wishing they could live in Middle-earth. People spend hours upon hours playing and MMORPG set in Middle-earth pretending they are Elves and Hobbits to get that feeling. Middle-earth is what endures. Middle-earth and its peoples and places and its languages and history. But always, always, Middle-earth.

That is what I want to achieve. Oh, I don't fool myself that I can ever be a worldbuilder on the scale of Tolkien. I have no gift for languages. But still I strive to create a world as real and complex and enduring as his. I want to fill it with wondrous places and fascinating people. I want to tell its compelling history.

And so, right now the worldbuilding is more important than the writing. Only once I have my secondary world fully fleshed out, once I know the intricacies of how it works and am acquainted with all its diverse societies and peoples and creatures... then I can write my tales. I already have a list of several different stories taking place in different parts of the world that I want to tell. But I must know the world to know how the stories unfold.

So for now I will not give in to the pressure to write my stories before I am ready. I will still write. I will write vignettes and short tales and character building exercises and the like. I will practice my story telling technique. But only once my sub-creation is ready will I write its history.

And then, oh then! I will be a storyteller, and not a writer.

Mythopoeia

J.R.R. Tolkien was a genius.

I know, I know. It's not "cool" nowadays to be unequivocally enthusiastic in one's admiration for anyone or anything. But I can't help it. I am a total Tolkien fangirl and I unabashedly love everything he wrote. And I'm not just talking about his absolutely brilliant stories. Tolkien was, of course, a tremendous scholar not just of language but of literature.

Tolkien coined a few new terms related to storytelling. The term "sub-creation" refers to the creation of a secondary world with its own rules and laws. The term "eucatrastrophe" is, in Tolkien's words, "the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears" (from On Fairy Stories). Tolkien felt this mechanism was the "highest function" of fairy stories. I had read and been familiar with these two terms before. But I finally came upon a third yesterday.

Mythopoeia. Literally, myth-making.

Tolkien used the term to describe what he did, crafting a mythology that draws from and uses the essential elements and truths found in real world mythologies and legends. It is meant to illuminate those fundamentals of our real world mythologies by exploring them in a created setting, a secondary world. The word has now come to be used to describe the genre of writers who attempt this feat.

And I, who have been wandering lost and confused amidst the modern fantasy genre, repulsed by much that I see, and wondering if this modern fantasy is truly what I am writing and if it is truly what I want to write, have seen the light of day. The answer is no, I am not a modern fantasy writer. Tolkien described what I want to do. My goal is mythopoeic sub-creation. I am writing mythopoeia, not fantasy.

Thank you, Tolkien, for having just the right words.

I found and read Tolkien's poem called Mythopoeia and, as usual, was amazed by Tolkien's genius with words. Tolkien was apparently responding to C.S. Lewis who felt that myths were lies and therefore useless even though "breathed through silver". Tolkien's return argument is indisputably elegant and lovely. Here's an excerpt from the poem, which I found online here:

Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme
of things not found within recorded time.
It is not they that have forgot the Night,
or bid us flee to organized delight,
in lotus-isles of economic bliss
forswearing souls to gain a Circe-kiss
(and counterfeit at that, machine-produced,
bogus seduction of the twice-seduced).
Such isles they saw afar, and ones more fair,
and those that hear them yet may yet beware.
They have seen Death and ultimate defeat,
and yet they would not in despair retreat,
but oft to victory have tuned the lyre
and kindled hearts with legendary fire,
illuminating Now and dark Hath-been
with light of suns as yet by no man seen.

I would that I might with the minstrels sing
and stir the unseen with a throbbing string.
I would be with the mariners of the deep
that cut their slender planks on mountains steep
and voyage upon a vague and wandering quest,
for some have passed beyond the fabled West.
I would with the beleaguered fools be told,
that keep an inner fastness where their gold,
impure and scanty, yet they loyally bring
to mint in image blurred of distant king,
or in fantastic banners weave the sheen
heraldic emblems of a lord unseen.

"Blessed are the legend makers"! Yes, sign me up for that! I think there is something fundamentally missing from much modern fantasy and I think it's tied to the loss of the genre's roots as myth and fairy tale and legend. I'll talk more about that in another post, but for now I am heartened and enthusiastic about digging back into those roots myself. And perhaps one day being an influence for bringing the genre back to its vibrant traditions. I love myth and fairy tale and legend and I think most fantasy readers do as well. I think there is a thirst for more offerings that draw from that tradition and that take on the task of mythopoeic sub-creation. I don't know if I'm up to the challenge, but I'm going to do my best.