Thursday, November 15, 2018
Meet the Authors: RJ Mirabal
At the Meet the Authors presentation yesterday, RJ Mirabal discussed his life and inspiration as a writer. While he is currently a successful author, he did experience rejection for some of his earlier works. Rather than allowing rejection and criticism to discourage him, he allowed it to shape his writing style and approach to his stories. He changed his style from science fiction to fantasy, because it allowed him to create his own world with its own rules. Specifically, he used New Mexico as his template just as Tolkien used familiar landscape for his mythology. Also similar to Tolkien's work is Mirabal's main character who is an alcoholic and unlikely hero. Mirabal chose to use someone who you would least expect to be virtuous, but this allowed him to incorporate redemption and realism into his story just as Tolkien did. Mirabal admitted that, while it only required about two and a half years to write his story, he thought about it and developed it for twenty. This also reminded me of Tolkien, who was known for constantly scribbling down ideas and cultivating ideas for his mythology.
1 comment:
I was also at the lecture. I think R J Mirabal had a lot of interesting things to say about writing fantasy. He talked about how he developed his fantastical alternate New Mexico, the Valle Abajo, using New Mexico’s beautiful scenery, diverse cultures, and various flora and fauna. It sounds like he was able to use these to create a richly developed fictional world with a history, similar to Tolkien. He did mention that Tolkien’s work made him want to do something similar. Rather than following the obvious route of so many storytellers imitating Tolkien using the Man-Orc-Dwarf-Elf formula, however, R J Mirabal has worked to create a uniquely New Mexican version of fantasy. He also talked about how he tries to make the world realistic by not providing the characters with easy solutions to their problems. He talked about how many authors use magic or other Deus Ex Machina resolutions to get their characters out of sticky situations, but he prefers to leave the characters to struggle with setbacks and overcome them using only realistic options that are available. He said that the magic is mostly just there for the people who like that sort of thing in his stories; he does not use it to drive the plot or change the outcome of things. He also said that the best piece of advice he had ever gotten was to write what you know, which was why he based his fantasy world off New Mexico. It was a fascinating discussion because R J Mirabal has been working to create a fantasy world similar to Tolkien’s world, without basing it off of the conventional fantasy stereotypes. His world is an original and interesting example of mythmaking.
~Ulmo
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