I don't think I've ever tried to draw a line between magical realism and fantasy before; it's always seemed to me that it doesn't matter where something is set or what species the characters nominally are so long as they're in interesting situations and have clearly drawn personalities. For me, "magical realism" set in New York or ancient Greece is fantasy as much as "high fantasy" set in Middle Earth is fantasy, because I've never been to New York or ancient Greece any more than I've been to Middle Earth. And, actually, that extends to places I have been: one author's London will never be the London I've visited, whether they've written magic or simply the past, whether they're Gaimen or Dickens.

After all, Douglas Adam's Rickmansworth isn't my Rickmansworth; there are no small cafes in my Rickmansworth, much to my annoyance.

And personally, I'm unsure that trying to divide sci-fi from fantasy will ever be a productive exercise, and adding a third category of magical realism just seems to confuse the issue. So many of the good ones are always going to be the ones that don't fit the patterns neatly.

YMMV.

I've always found magic realism to be a subset of fantasy. Sometimes I can look at a work and and say "Yes. Realism. Check." Other times I look at the person calling it "magic realism" and say "It's okay. They may shun you for liking fantasy, but they won't kill you for it."

Thanks for the explanation! I thought that was how it was broken down, but I figured I'd ask experts. Realism is such an iffy term. After going to so many SCA events, a well-drawn medieval camping scene in a typical fantasy novel makes me go "Yep, been there, done that."

Does anyone else go through phases of *how* they can write? For the past several weeks I've been unable to do anything from scratch on the computer, ie, writing new stuff. Not even my lovely Palm was making the muse stop pouting. Finally, in frustration, I grabbed an old spiral notebook from the pile under my desk, pulled out a pen--and here come the words, just like back in the day twenty-five years ago, when I started all this.

My wrists aren't up to this, darn it.

"It's okay. They may shun you for liking fantasy, but they won't kill you for it."

Um, no. Sorry. I've heard that before, and, well, no. Not saying it can't apply, but stating loud and clear that it doesn't always. It sure as hell doesn't apply to me.

I wrote a very nice fable, that was essentially killed because bookstore owners - who simply can't put stuff on shelves, but must must must assign categories to it because apparently, readers can't function without the reassurance of labels, accurate or not - stuck it on fantasy shelves. Which apparently pissed off the people who want fantasy no end, because, hey, no high heroics! No dragons to be slain! No sign of any of the basics! You're messing with our trope! Evil! Someone grab Biter and Smite Her!

And then, with the book that followed? A nice little novel about a woman who deals with her midlife crisis and nasty divorce by manifesting a beautiful demigod and having sex with him all over Europe?

They did it again. And again, I got pissy letters from "true" fantasy readers.

Neither book was fantasy. If you need to label it, call it speculative fiction and be done with it.

I know what I call fantasy. See above listing, starting with the high heroics, throwing in, far too often, confused female characters whose strengths are all traditional male strengths: girls in codpieces. Add some species with mysterious and vaguely ominous-sounding names, stick in a place called MiddleDownLowerNether Balropia or something, et voila, you have the book that the True Believers who objected to both Plainsong and And The Put Out The Light cluttering up their fantasy shelves seemed to want. It's also the book that leaves me with Dorothy Parker's reaction: "Constant Reader fwowed up."

And yes, I really do feel strongly about. This is what I do for a living. I just write the damned things.

Connie, I have an odd split in the method: I tend to make notes by hand, spiral notebook. Notes on colour, texture, odd physical realities, quality of light, quirks. But all actual fiction is on the computer.

I've had people tell me my style is completely different in longhand, Connie. But I was slow to learn to write intelligible letters. Thanks, everyone. But I'm only as good as my next project. I think I mostly prefer magical realism, as far as I understand it. Or anyway, vastly prefer Esquivel and Hoffman to Tolkien and such.

Not saying it can't apply, but stating loud and clear that it doesn't always.

You did notice where I said "other times" in the sentence, right? I said absolutely NOTHING about always. In fact, I stated the opposite.

I said absolutely NOTHING about always. In fact, I stated the opposite.

Actually, I didn't (edit: parse the sentence that way). Good point-out, and yes, you're right. It still reads a bit oddly to me, that sentence, but that's me readig it, not you writing it. Sorry.

I remember the entire scifi/fantasy community being outraged because Margaret Attwood asked them not to nominate her for (I think) a Hugo for Handmaid's Tale. It didn't fit her definition of science fiction or fantasy; in her eyes, she'd written a morality tale, a fable about what would inevitably happen if this country continued down a particular path. In her head, she'd written a novel, period. She didn't want ti categorised, because breaking the stuff down meant that something she considered important to a broad range would get shelved in a section where a lot of her potential readers would never think to look.

So she asked them to not. And the community went ballistic. She's such a snob! She's one of those Look Down Her Nose types! The furor was nuts. Science fiction writers were outraged.

I thought it was ridiculous. I had a book or two killed because it didn't fit the straight definitions of any one genre, and no one has shelves anymore that simply say "fiction".

I've found that, while writing something like an term paper that I have to keep organized, I do better with a longhand outline and then typing on the computer. For almost anything where I need to let loose a little more and just let the ideas get from brain to paper, I do much better writing in out longhand, and then editing while typing. I can't be too creative while I'm typing, because seeing the words typed out makes them actual words, and they seem too set and final, and I end up spending way too much time figuring out if the next thing I want to write goes with or contradicts the last thing I wrote. When I'm writing out longhand, everything is just scribbles, and if I want to change something, my brain doesn't object.

I've had people tell me my style is completely different in longhand, Connie

I've noticed hte same thing myself. In the psychic space where my writing takes place, the handwritten letters themselves form a visual image of the scene, as if I'm drawing pictures as well as writing words. It's ... closer, somehow, to what I'm seeing in my head.

Long things seem to demand a lot of handwritten time. I *can* produce on screen, thank god, but whenever there's stalling I have to go to the pen. Thankfully, the stories that appear full-formed from the brow of Zeus don't care how they're produced. They're not going anywhere.