fantasy woes

Many people don't seem to see the worth in fantasy writing. They think it's ridiculous, and beyond that, they most definitely think it is childish. For a long time, I guess I felt "similar": I became a reader of classics, by Mark Twain and Hemingway, instead of engaging myself with fantasy. In fact, for a number of years, I even talked smack, every chance I could, about my friends who were still very obsessed with fantasy worlds. They did not seem like "artists" to me, these friends, but rather just "consumers". I.e. Fantasy was a product at the shopping mall, in a video game or in a recent film, and so that was why they liked it. They did not read "real books", only Game of Thrones, and this really aggravated me.

Then, however, my interest in fantasy, for some odd reason, found itself being reignited again. I think one big reason was because of how similar I started to realize fantasy stories were to normal stories, which was a kind of strange realization. For example, most people, in my experience, tend to categorize fantasy stories, as though they're literally being created (and not just based) on some other planet, entirely. They put them in this category of genre that, they're convinced, is for some reason not capable of evoking the same "deep imagery" as a writer like Twain or Hemingway, with their stories of reality. But then, one day, I got to really thinking about something: Considering Hemingway wrote stories set in an early 20th century past I'll never know, is he not just as much of a fantasy writer, to me, personally, as someone like Michael Moorcock? I mean, next to nothing written in the Hemingway classics is something that I can do in my own life. Therefore, it's just as much of a "fantasy" as Frodo and Samwise walking along in the Shire, wouldn't you say?

Still, however, I always seem to get a little "sick feeling" in my stomach, when I again step back and realize that I fell into the fantasy writing again, because it always makes me feel like I'm some sort of idiot,and fool. Another thing it makes me feel -- and this is even worse -- is that, if I try to publish both fantasy stories and real stories, would it even be possible? This is really the biggest struggle of all, I think, for many writers, whether they realize it or not: Can people ever take a fantasy writer seriously, if he then, later on, starts trying to write some tales of reality? Consider, after all, reading something from JRR Tolkien, the Lord of the Rings author, that wasn't about Mordor, but rather about his own reality. Would anyone even be interested? It literally seems impossible to imagine. It's like every author can only be fantasy, or reality, and nothng in between. But how annoying this  truly is!

Speaking for myself, I seem to very much like switching between both, and I would love to be able to have that privilege, but I sometimes just don't know if it is possible, and I sometimes think it is my big fear. For example, if the first text I was to ever get published, was a fantasy text, is it going to mean that I'll never write tales of reality, ever again? This would be a terrible thing for me, but it seems like it would be what wound up happening. And of course the same would go, in the opposite direction, if my first published tale was a "real" tale. I also then wonder if I could publish a collection of short and even unfinished tales, where half are fantasy and half are not. Would readers find this bewildering? Are they unable to turn from one page that details the history of a dwarf, to the next page that details the history of my Little Italy neighborhood? Is it really this difficult for the rest of you out there, to switch genres like this???

Who knows. Just some thoughts...

### Fantasy