Contemporary

11-6-11

I've been wondering why I don't write anything that's particularly contemporary. I usually write far in the future or in some indeterminate time that could be both alternate reality or the far future. Depends on the story. I've read some great contemporary novels (and even beta'ed one that I hope gets published), but it's not something I'm drawn to write.

I think part of my problem is that I feel that I've just never fit any of the particular stereotypes while growing up, and so it's hard to depict something that I've never experienced. Oh, the emotions would be there, perhaps, but the experience wouldn't be. For example (and forgive me, it's a rather shallow example), I was not the teen girl who was all into boys and make-up or whatever else the shelf and screen depict teen girls to be. I was the gifted bookworm who was neither outcast nor popular, concerned with my grades and scribbling away at stories when I was finished with my homework. I had issues, but I was largely unaware of them until after high school. 

The other part, I suppose, is that I have no desire to relive high school. I mostly enjoyed it while I was there, but I don't miss it (especially the not-so-great parts). I don't feel as if I could add anything to the table when it comes to depicting real life.

Besides, the stories that I identified with in middle and high school weren't contemporary. I read the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings in sixth grade (although I did skip all the poetry in that first reading and have only come to appreciate the depth of LOTR as I've gotten older), and I started reading the books my mom had been assigned in high school (like The Great Gatsby and 1984).

But the characters I identified with I can point to with relative ease: Ender and Harry. I met Harry first, in sixth grade (or should I say second year?). I actually read Chamber of Secrets first and had to backtrack to find Sorcerer's Stone. I never waited in a line for new books or new movies, but I did read it because I could see my experience echoed in the story of the bespectacled boy who lived in a cupboard under the stairs--not the experience of being a wizard, but of feeling alone and outnumbered and isolated due to events not under one's control.

And Ender? I met him my sophomore year of high school, right around the time that things socially started unexpectedly falling apart for me. I borrowed the book from one of my classmates, my principal's son, and I finished the book within two days (definitely on the flashlight list). To be set apart because of one's intelligence--I had known that since second grade, and so I bought a copy of my very own during Ringfest when we visited the mall after practice. I take great care of my books, but my copy of Ender's Game is so read that its spine is creased and I have to take care when re-reading it to ensure that the pages don't come out.

And neither setting is contemporary. Well, sure, Harry lives on Earth, and it's technically taking place in the early 90s, but that's never directly stated and besides, wizards live in a reality alongside the "real" world. The setting is fantastical, and it's not what I consider contemporary. And Ender's Earth is far in the future. Even if its origins are our present time, Ender's society is not the society of today.

And I guess what I'm trying to say is, as long as the characters and the emotions and the feelings are real, the setting (for me, at least) doesn't have to be. And since that's what I read, that's what I write. (Plus, then I'm not constrained by how things are now. But that's another matter for another post.)

More later.