Listening to Ta-Nehisi Coates wax poetic in his 2015 book Between the World and Me, is a stunning reminder of how important influences are to what we create–and IF we create–in our lives. I come from a place where I hold creation in extremely high regard, even if that creation is of a form I despise (tik tok) on a personal level I respect the act of creation and I feel the cathartic nature of the act when I do create and when I do think about what I am creating next.
Now, in this moment, I am thinking about the next story. I am thinking about the fantasy work down the world and how fantasy is largely representative of existing racial and social groupings and works sort of as a stand in for the complexities and desires of people–often a particularly disenfranchised set of people. I usually recreate these societal breaches forward, but I am considering reshaping them in the fantasy novel. I am thinking about doing entirely different comparisons; taking my personal what if’s of the future and casting them backwards thousands of years to build something… different.
World building is great fun and shaped, to be sure, off the modern world. When I return to the past it won’t be merely as a refracted image of now. It will be something far more sinister and something far closer to the truth.