Unbox Your Words #2a

Sprinkling a little magic onto your words

This post is coming to you from the enchanting Totleigh Barton writing centre in deepest Devon in the UK, where I am co-tutoring (with the fabulous Sean Lusk) a residential fiction and hybrid writing course for Arvon - with a magical realism theme. What, you might ask, might “magical realism” actually be? An excellent question! I have realised over the years that when I am invited to teach a thing, I need to figure out for myself what that thing might be. So, for my purposes, “magical realism” refers to the addition of something a little magical to the general consensus on what we call “reality”. This is how it might differ from science fiction and fantasy, say, where there tend to be entities and concepts - aliens, time travel, teleportation, elves and goblins etc… - that wouldn’t be part of that general consensus (Or not yet).

A quick note on “reality”: as someone who studied quantum physics and relativity as an undergrad, I have always known that my idea of what is real doesn’t fit with this generally accepted story we are told. Sitting in a lecture listening to someone describe experiments showing tiny particles popping in and out of existence, say, or something that is sometimes a particle and sometimes a wave, or just trying to describe how electricity works, got my imagination going and added a sprinkling of magic to my worldview from then on. (If you’d like to know more, check out Jim Al Khalili on the Double Slit Experiment on YouTube) I have never felt constrained in my writing to stick to what is thought of as “real”. It’s so much more fun this way, I’ve found! And not just that: it often helps me say what I want to say, express something that I might have difficult coming at in too “real” a way.