Literary Bex

yeahwriters:

Write a magical realism/realistic-fantasy crossover that starts in a fort but ends up in a different world (like the Narnia wardrobe).

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I’m not saying this is a bad idea/exercise, and I’m not saying I wouldn’t do this as an exercise, but I think, for serious, I would never want one of these awesome forts to be a portal to a “real” magical place: these are portals to wonderful magical places that live in the imaginations of those who created them.  I love the portals of Narnia precisely because they are mundane: a piece of musty old furniture, an ugly painting, an ugly ring (that takes one to an empty, seemingly innocuous magical forest).  That boringness of the portals into Narnia made me as a child (and as an adult) think of what wonderful possibilities could be lurking in the back of my closet, in the crawl space, in my grandmother’s pantry, in my grandfather’s barn, underneath the cottage down the cape, through the little doorway under the stairs (we didn’t have one of those, but I knew of them); the magic was that these inspired my little creative brain to consider what could be and to develop the stories that could go along with them.  The everydayness of the wardrobe and the cupboard and the door into the next apartment makes magic real in this world not just in the fictional world.  It makes the mundane magical.  Building an awesome fort out of pillows and bedsheets and fairy lights makes magic in the actual world and in the mind.

An awesome bedsheet fort gives the builder a place to live out imaginary fantasies, a place to hide, a place to read, a place to be disustingly normal, if that’s what one wants.  Freshman year of college I made a fort out of my bed and it was my place for complete and utter privacy.  My desk was under there so it was also a place to read and do work uninterrupted.  My roommate would sometimes not even know I was there.  It was like being invisible.  Which is a sort of magic in and of itself.  Something that is already magical shouldn’t not be a portal to a “real” magical place, I don’t think it’s as strong a symbol or as beneficial to the reader as making the portal to the “real” magical place in the closet of the reading nook at the Children’s Library, or in the beer cooler at the package store, or amongst the roots of the apple tree, or through the upstairs cupboard in the hall.  Magic is often missed in the actual world because it is found in the most boring, most unexpected of places and it’s up to literature to point this out.

(Source: matafari)