I can finally say that I have finished His Dark Materials.
My goodness, what a spectacular series. Honestly, I can't find any more to say about it.
I am disappointed in myself. When I was younger, one of the most notable things I did was read. I read constantly, and I was a fast reader. Like other things, reading was something that came naturally to me. If it wasn't for school, then I was reading for pleasure or curiosity. I love my books. I love being able to hold them, smell the crinkled, old pages and feel the texture of the paper under my fingers.
There is something almost magical about being able to hold a story in your hand and let it unfold in your imagination. When your mind syncs with the author's, it is as if two worlds are combining, and everything about the joining makes perfect sense, despite irregularities. Maybe you imagined this character to have raven-colored hair, but they instead have a deep gold. Maybe this man falls in love with this woman instead of that woman, and his best friend is actually his enemy. Or, possibly, the shop the main character's parents own does not sell organic groceries but electronics.
But that is the magic of imagination and reading. The magic is in that you can have an idea and you can explore it without the original idea overshadowing it. Simple details like height and weight and the color of the protagonist's shoes (although possibly critical in the plot), are yours to imagine and bend.
This freedom, this capability is one of the reasons why I enjoy writing fiction every once in a while. I have never published any of my stories, nor have I ever really finished one (oops...), and it is a very rare occasion when I let someone read it. Which, you might say, seems very strange since I love that people can read stories that are not, essentially, true. But that's just it. I love the idea that someone CAN read a story of mine, not necessarily that they WILL.
I recently started thinking that I might actually begin to post some fiction work online. That being said, the idea makes me a bit nervous. I do not get nervous over the thought of people reading my articles for the Maroon Weekly. I think what scares me is that people might judge or criticize (harshly) my imagination and the experiences I go through to inspire me to write fiction.
Eh, I suppose I will never know until I try.
It is also very likely that I need to FINISH a story before I post it on the internet...
