So, Nata­nia Bar­ron from The Alder­s­gate Cycle posted some­thing that sparked a ques­tion in my head. One that I have danced over before in a moment of casual curios­ity, but never looked into deeply. Namely, ‘- do we write what we are? If so, who are you?’

Now, I know that from expe­ri­ence I tend to write noth­ing like what we — or I — am. My imag­i­na­tion is bored with the every­day life of an Eng­lish­men in Amer­ica. Indeed, it’s even bored with the notion of the human race as it is and what­ever it may, or may not have given us. My mind seeks to con­jure up any­thing and every­thing, and often things that are so far removed from real­ity that even it (and con­se­quently me) gets con­fused by it’s own plethora of thoughts and mutant-creations.

I have bounced from Neo-London futures to dying uni­verses, from Kings and Queens of made-up realms to Angelic soci­eties bat­tling one another in post-apocalyptic, mech­a­nised worlds (the lat­ter of which is to be the basis — and the­sis — for my NaNoW­riMo attempt).

But back to the ques­tion at hand; writ­ing what we are, and who we may be if this is the case. Now, I took this ques­tion in a reli­gious con­text. I am not reli­gious: I have two chil­dren, a wife and two cats, but I believe in noth­ing, I fol­low no faith. That is not to say there is noth­ing out there, but the fal­li­ble nature of man leads me to con­clude that we can never be cer­tain that that some­thing is indeed out there. We are not omnipo­tent, or omnipresent there­fore how can we ever know?

This is not an argu­ment how­ever, as an agnos­tic (as I have con­sid­ered myself to be for many years) I do not protest the exis­tance of some­thing beyond our real­ity, be it sam­sara, heaven or any­thing in-between. I just don’t have enough evi­dence or a small enough doubt that we can­not, truly, know.

So, do I write what we are? No. Does this tell me who I am? Yes. At present, I am writ­ing the foun­da­tion for Arbi­ture which will be my NaNoW­riMo entry. I can­not truly describe it in sim­ple terms, but to sum it up: it is about two angelic races from dif­fer­ent realms of exis­tance, con­verg­ing at a point where their own bal­ance of suf­fer­ing and enlight­en­ment causes the realm they inhabit to implode, caus­ing a visceral-ethereal war in the process… I told you it’s not sim­ple to ‘blurb’.

The nature of the story lends itself to Judo-Christian beliefs played out on Bud­dhist stage — read­ing that back gives me cause to raise an eye­brow in scep­ti­cism. What have I got­ten myself into? I am ques­tion­ing faith, the nature of sac­ri­fice, a life of suf­fer­ing and a life of angelic pride and div­ina­tion, and what might hap­pen should these two cor­ner­stones of sep­a­rate exis­tences col­lide. There is also love vs. faith, pas­sion vs. doubt and some inter-realm travel for good mea­sure (or plains of exis­tence if you like) and I’m not even religious!

What the fuck am I thinking?

The answer, it came to me sim­ply, is that I like to present myself and my doubts with what oth­ers see as their truths. What bet­ter way to answer one’s own ques­tions than to look into a mir­ror, or walk in another’s shoes. I imag­ine my mind chose this in some sub­con­scious way. I am intrigued, but do not believe and as such my imag­i­na­tion has sought to throw these two things together in some kind of Cage Fight.

It’s fas­ci­nat­ing — to me at least — to loom beyond what I once thought was a cool vision in my mind’s eye and to dis­cover there is so much more behind it. There are ques­tions, and maybe even some answers in the things I write. For me that makes it even more ful­fill­ing to do.