Juxtaposition: the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect. (Oxford Dictionary)

Don’t ask me why, but I love this word.  At uni, it became a personal challenge to get it into every essay.  It rolls from the tongue in the most beautiful way.  It sounds more intellectual than it is. I could say it all day.

I love what it represents too, the possibilities for weirdness.  You can juxtapose reality with magic and get magical realism, science with antiquity to give you steampunk,  paranormal and romance to give you…  well, let’s not go there.

I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with this post again. I just had to use this word.  And, let’s face it, the only other possiblity, for me, was Jacob.  Admit it, the people who know me were expecting Jacob, weren’t you?  See, so juxtaposition means you haven’t had to listen to me talk about my books again.  Luckily, I couldn’t think of a Merlin reference beginning with J either.  As you were…

I’ve been kinda flippant during most of this challenge, but a couple of days ago I had confidence crisis. I pulled out a pen and notebook to do this post, and this is what I wrote, word for word, my thoughts and feelings undiluted and uncensored:

You had a lucky escape. I soooo wanted to stick a photo of Merlin crying here – the cheekbones were mesmerising! This is pretty mesmerising, though.

Even I have days where I feel like I can’t make this writing thing work. My ultimate goal, like so many of my fellow writers, is to scrape a living doing something I love. I don’t need much. I don’t need fame or theme parks built in honour of my characters (though a girl can dream). I just want to write. Mostly I stay optimistic and focused but sometimes I look at the handful of sales I’ve made for a trilogy that took me six years to complete and I wonder whether it’s worth it. I’m not bleating, just being honest. I know that when it comes down to it, they’re just books. No one dies if they don’t sell. I have my family and friends and health. I have a decent job and hope for the future of a different kind. Even so, some days, it feels like the sky is falling in.

That was what I wrote down. But then I remembered this blog post and it reminded me of the reasons why I write. I write because I have to or my head would explode and there would be mixed up stories splat all over the wall and they wouldn’t make any sense to anyone, least of all me.

Today, I’m back to my annoying, flippant self again. I may delete this post, who knows? It feels like a weakness I shouldn’t be admitting. Or maybe it’s weaker not to admit it that sometimes I get down too.

Bravery comes in all shapes and sizes.  There’s the big Prince Arthur sword-wielding warrior variety, and then there’s the quietly-in-the-background-doing-magic-under-pain-of death Merlin variety.   That example was completely random and had nothing to do with any sort of Merlin obsession whatsoever.  Nor was it an excuse to include a beautiful photo in this post. Honest…

Sometimes bravery is nothing more than stepping out of your front door when you feel like the whole world is against you.  Or self-publishing a book when you’re terrified that, at best, no one will want to read or, at worst, they’ll read and then tear it apart in a scathing review.

However it comes, you can’t have a hero without it.  The most boring heroes I’ve ever encountered in a work of fiction are those with no fear.  How can you be glorious and courageous if nothing scares you?  How can you command the respect and awe of others if you’ve no terrors to overcome.  There’s no emotional risk in that, even if the physical risks are still present, and emotional risk is what moves the receiver of the story.

Eleanor Roosevelt said: ‘Do one thing that scares you every day.’  I love that advice.

So, be scared, dear reader, be scared so that you can be brave.  Step out that door, wield that sword, flash that magic.  Put your book out if the story burns to escape the confines of your mind.  Give us the tale of your terrified hero, the one that will face their fears and be all the more glorious when they finally do.

I, for one, can’t wait to hear it.

Scratch beneath the surface of reality and there’s some pretty weird stuff going on.  Take quantum physics, for example.  I don’t pretend to understand it fully, but I know that the microcosm seemingly flouts the laws of the macro in ways that are mind-blowing.  Yet it’s all part of the reality that we think we know.   I love that idea – that in an apparently ordinary setting, extraordinary stuff can be happening.   I love the juxtaposition of domestic and fantasy worlds, ordinary people and magical powers.   It’s why I love to read magical realism texts and stories with a slightly skewed reality.   Many of my favourite TV shows and films, such as Misfits and Being Human, employ the same tropes.  Even The Doctor likes his fishfingers and custard! Shakespeare had it pegged it when he wrote that famous line in Hamlet:

‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’

So you can imagine how much I love things like parallel worlds in literature, and why I often end up writing them myself.  To be honest, most of my family think I inhabit one all the time anyway!  But I just can’t look at a situation without seeing something surreal in it.   Even if you ask me to write a work of realism, I guarantee that at least one of the characters will have some weird idiosyncracy.  Either that or they’ll develop a super-power while putting the recycling out.  Then again, I seem to get powers of invisibility when our recycling needs to go out…

And before I go,  a huge thanks to Arlee Bird, whose name begins with A and who also began the A-Z challenge.  Cheers, Arlee!