The Fantasy Writer Has No Identity

I’ve quoted the letters of John Keats here before, and probably will do so again. Keats’s thoughts on literature and the art of creativity, often nestled as if in passing among more prosaic matters in his correspondence, transcend bone-dry literary criticism and illumine the ungraspable spirit of creativity. Furthermore, in my opinion, the Romantic poets provide, in many ways, an analogue to modern writers of speculative fiction, concerned as they are not with the real world per se but how elements of the supernatural reflect universal truths of the real world. The Romantics were the last bastion of this transcendent art before the onset of bleak realism and existentialism that pervaded the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

In a letter to Richard Woodhouse on 27 October 1818, Keats wrote:

What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion [sic] Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation. A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity-he is continually in forming–and filling some other Body–the Sun, the Moon, the Sea, and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute-the poet has none; no identity-he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God’s Creatures.

The letter is short, and worth reading in full. Keats makes several observations here which, almost two centuries later, are still highly pertinent to writing in general, and to the writing of speculative fiction in particular.

The above passage parallels the Buddhist concept of anattā, loosely translated as “not self.” The concept, as its translation suggests, denies the existence of a permanent self as set apart from the world. Along with anicca, the idea of impermanence, and dukkha, the presence of unhappiness or suffering, anattā is one of the central precepts of Buddhist thought. I do not know whether Keats had any exposure to Buddhist texts, but a quick Google search reveals that I’m by no means the first to point out such a connection.

To some extent, Keats’s assertion flies in the face of the dictum of modern writing teachers to “write what you know.” This rule reflects an underlying that the self, the writer’s outlook, knowledge, and experience, forms the basis of good, solid writing. Even teachers like Julia Cameron and Natalie Goldberg who embrace a more “universal” approach to writing sometimes unintentionally fall back into this comfort zone. But “writing what you know” precludes the joy of discovery, the “gusto” for embracing the new that Keats hints at in his letter.

Of course, speculative fiction presents its own set of challenges to the “write what you know” axiom. Very few of us, I’ll wager, have encountered ice dragons or interstellar warp drives during the course of our everyday experience. In the absence of purely empirical knowledge, the writer of SF must fall back on, yes, “speculation.” Imagination comprises a large part of the speculative process, but it isn’t the whole story. Good writers not only imagine their creations into being, but spend some time inhabiting them. of “filling some other body,” as Keats put it.

I’m not trying to completely discount the “write what you know” premise; it serves as an excellent starting point, and not without reason do writers of urban fantasy set their tales in cities with which they’re familiar. I’m merely suggesting that writers of speculative fiction, and I’d argue writers of other genres as well, succeed when they push their boundaries beyond the known, get out of their own heads, and experience the world–both real and imagined, seen and unseen–from an objective universal perspective.