Spring Planting Moon
Kate’s in Colorado. She made it across Nebraska today and stopped for the night in
Julesberg. Her back is fine. She has a brace and she’s driving.
It was good to hear her well and so far along. A bumpy start yesterday morning but with the usual Olson determination, there she is.
She even stopped at a pony-express museum along the way. You go, girl.
(Kate at Running Aces late last summer.)
Spring Planting Moon
World enough, and time.
Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress
Just realized what an apt summary of fantasy this is. Fantasy creates new world, one which be enough to engage the reader and engage the reader over time. Just the author invests a lot of time in the development of a world and narratives set within that world, a reader who bothers to learn the intricacies of this alternative world typically wants more than one story, often many more than one story, set there.
It becomes a kind of contract between writer and reader. I will spend my time imagining this world and what goes on it and, if you like it enough to learn it, then I agree to write more. It can have a deadening effect, of course, always working in one fictional space, but so far, in the Tailte mythos, I’ve found it liberating and energizing. It grows bigger as I write, not smaller. In fact, I have to find ways to limit it so I can tell bounded stories.
Spring Planting Moon
Planting moon? Maybe. That’s only if the snowing stops and the temps rise out of the 40’s. Ever. More snow last night.