Life influencing art
Apr. 30th, 2011 07:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sandra_lindseyApparently there was some kind of Significant Event yesterday...
When it comes to things like the Royal Family, I'm very firmly not in the 'Oooh' camp. I appreciate the work that they do, and I'm not a republican, so I'm not about to advocate that we get rid of the lot of 'em. I'd say I'm somewhere between the two extremes, but when it comes to going gooey over a wedding between two people I don't know? I seem to come down heavily on the side of cynicism and glad to have it as a (fairly) normal work day at my day-job. It has, however, made me think again about how, as writers, our stories are influenced by our own experiences and the culture(s)/country(ies) we grow up in.
Easy example: something I've come across a few times in fantasy books written by American authors is a clash between two cultures, one of which settles in towns and villages and believes in private ownership of land, and the other is nomadic and believes all land should be held in common. Took me a while, as a British teen who left school with only a basic grasp of British history (though a fairly keen enthusiasm for local history), to figure out why these themes kept cropping up...
Coming back to where I started, my upbringing and the fact I'm lucky enough to have been brought up in, and moved back to, the most gorgeous country in the world (Wales) have shaped my perception of what it means to be Royal, to the point where I think that being part of that clique must be a right royal pain in the whatsit, and I'm damn happy I'm a normal person and can fool myself into thinking that generally no one notices me.
There is one event from my past which I can say with some certainty was a turning point in my seeing Royals as not really very special people, but I've gone on long enough for now and need to go shopping :-)
When it comes to things like the Royal Family, I'm very firmly not in the 'Oooh' camp. I appreciate the work that they do, and I'm not a republican, so I'm not about to advocate that we get rid of the lot of 'em. I'd say I'm somewhere between the two extremes, but when it comes to going gooey over a wedding between two people I don't know? I seem to come down heavily on the side of cynicism and glad to have it as a (fairly) normal work day at my day-job. It has, however, made me think again about how, as writers, our stories are influenced by our own experiences and the culture(s)/country(ies) we grow up in.
Easy example: something I've come across a few times in fantasy books written by American authors is a clash between two cultures, one of which settles in towns and villages and believes in private ownership of land, and the other is nomadic and believes all land should be held in common. Took me a while, as a British teen who left school with only a basic grasp of British history (though a fairly keen enthusiasm for local history), to figure out why these themes kept cropping up...
Coming back to where I started, my upbringing and the fact I'm lucky enough to have been brought up in, and moved back to, the most gorgeous country in the world (Wales) have shaped my perception of what it means to be Royal, to the point where I think that being part of that clique must be a right royal pain in the whatsit, and I'm damn happy I'm a normal person and can fool myself into thinking that generally no one notices me.
There is one event from my past which I can say with some certainty was a turning point in my seeing Royals as not really very special people, but I've gone on long enough for now and need to go shopping :-)
