Thursday, February 14, 2002

Sometimes I get this urge for literary greatness. Problem is - the words which are good - perhaps even really good - don't accompany that urge. But I know what the work I want to create looks like.

1) It's fantasy. I love fantasy, because you can play around with everything and make subtle or obvious comments on society, the universe and your childhood without having to be a "serious" writer with all the duties of political corectness/controversy that entails.

2) It's written: no pictures, no movies, no music. I love the written word. I love to wrap up in a warm woolen blanket, stretch out on the couch and be lost in a new book. I am waiting for a package from Amazon as I write, Oh, such delightful anticipation.

3) It's a book on paper. And it's a game. And it's a hypertext. This is where I get problems. My many loves don't overlap. I can't snuggle and play a computer game at the same time. I can't take a hypertext with me in the bath-tub or use it on an airplane. I want the ease and accessability of the book, the complexity of a text with layers and paths such as I can have with the computer - the distractions, the detours, I love to be able to choose that. Last, but not least I want the game, I want to be able to have different experiences in the same fictitous universe, I want to win or lose, I want to feel that I take part in - not the story, but the fiction.

I don't think I can ever create this perfect work of writing. My skills of writing fiction have been neglected, the poems were never published (I did send them to a publisher and did get good feed-back - they were even talking of publishing them, but I finished at the University, got a job and supported my family instead of reworking and returning them. Yes, I chose bread over poetry, and I rarely regret it.) and academic writing quietly pushed the adventures out of my life. Still, at times, I re-encounter the feeling of delight when words fall into place, stack themselves up neatly and express exactly what I want, and then some.

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