Escapist worlds need someone to dream them

Let me sum it up by saying I realized that if there was only one thing I could do for the rest of my life, I’d want it to be writing. It’s not just a high, it’s profoundly deep, involving my whole personality and existence. And potentially connecting me to so many others who would read my writing. I realized something quite deep about myself—namely that I have always been attracted to escapism, that’s why I always read Gothic and Victorian novels, they were set in another country and another era. That’s why I love Xena and Star Trek and Mass Effect and the Harry Potter films. And that’s why I moved to Rome. It’s also why I need to start spending at least as much time writing as I do escaping into stories and settings. Because those places don’t exist independently, they needed someone to dream them up. Even Disneyworld needs someone to maintain it — as Meg and Lynne found when the power went out on the Snow White ride.

If I were Major Kira, the world would seem no less chaotic than this world I live in now. The skill — the gift — I have that perhaps Kira doesn’t have (and Benjamin does), is to make sense of it. Through story.