Karen Nilsen

Escape Artist

Frequent advice to new writers is to keep a journal and write in it religiously, every day if possible.  I’ve never taken this advice.  The only time I’ve come close is with the dream journal I’ve kept the past six months.  Otherwise I have diaries scattered around the house with perhaps the first few pages filled in, then no more.   My poor abandoned livejournal account looks somewhat the same, a peppering of random entries that soon petered out. 

In contrast to this poor attention to chronicling real events and my reactions to them, I find that I write and write and write about the imaginary people who populate my mind, surrounding myself with stacks of manuscript that may never be read by anyone other than me and few devoted friends.  What does this say about me, that I love reading and writing and talking about other peoples’ lives but that I avoid my own?  Am I a psychological voyeur?  Am I an escape artist from my own life?

Given that I lack but a few pages to complete the second draft of Tapestry Lion, the sprawling sequel to Witch Awakening (which already pushes the boundaries of acceptable word count for first novels, even fantasy), I’ve been wondering of late.  

Five years ago, on this very day, my mother passed away after a tough battle with lymphoma.  She collapsed in my father’s arms in the bathroom about six yards from where I sit typing this.   Certainly, if I’d been writing a true account of my life the last five years instead of Tapestry Lion and Witch Awakening, my readers would likely find it no less fantastical than my imaginary lands of Cormalen and Sarneth.  The real events of my life since my mother’s passing seem at turns lurid, tragic, wonderful, then lurid again.  Justice gained at an incredible cost, fizzled romance and loves lost, traveling to Norway twice to see my wonderful family there, a few false friends and professional mayhem, tragedy and grief, some great opportunities for my writing, a copperhead in my dryer, a live possum in my kitchen (I dwell in the country, what can I say?), many true friends to laugh with and tide me through the unbearable (what would I be, what would I do, without my friends?  I can only hope to be half the friend, one quarter the friend, my friends have been to me.  For those of you reading this, please know I am eternally grateful for you.)

As I start to edit the second draft of Tapestry Lion, I wonder what inspired certain characters and certain scenes.  The realization has dawned on me that far from avoiding writing about my life, I have subconsciously used this vehicle of fantasy to write all about my life.  Witch Awakening and Tapestry Lion are my journals, my diaries of a life told in symbols.  Far from the escape I planned, I find myself confronting my life in a fun house mirror, my reflection all wavy and distorted, some parts overemphasized, some parts deflated, but still my reflection. 

There are some people in this world who think that fantasy, horror, and sci-fi are not serious writing, that someone who writes the modern equivalent of fairy tales can’t possibly be serious about his or her work.  I wish these naysayers luck confronting themselves at the witching hour, long after the lights have gone out and they’re alone with themselves in the dark, just their rational thoughts to accompany them . . .