If you’ve read the About page on this site, you know why I chose a gryphon theme. Something I didn’t mention there is how the creature’s dual nature corresponds in a way to the dual nature of my writing and reading interests. I am a technical communicator by trade, but the pendulum swings about as far as it can go to touch another interest: fantasy literature.

The two seem incompatible and so far apart that it’s as if they’re on opposite sides of the Grand Canyon. One is analytical and dry, while the other involves creativity and imagination. How can interest for the two coexist in one brain?

It is a (perhaps common) misconception that technical communicators possess no imagination, probably due to the word “technical” in the title. That’s a subject for another blog entry, but let me at least point out that for me, technical communication involves creativity on some level.

The two may seem worlds apart also because technical writing is for professionals, but fantasy literature is for children and daydreamers. Right?

I agree on a certain aspect of that argument—I’d rather give room to the child and daydreamer within me, or life seems more dismal than it really is.

Fantasy has merits beyond entertainment. This is what Lloyd Alexander, author of The Prydain Chronicles and other series, had to say:

For me, writing fantasy for young people has surely been the most creative and liberating experience of my life. As a literary form, fantasy has let me express my own deepest feelings and attitudes about the world we’re all obliged to live in.

A paradox? Creating worlds that never existed as a way to gain some kind of insight into a world that is very real indeed? The paradox is easily resolved. Whatever its surface ornamentation, fantasy that strives to reach the level of durable art deals with the bedrock of human emotions, conflicts, dilemmas, relationships. That is to say: the realities of life.

As adults, we know that life is a tough piece of business. Sometimes the most heroic thing we can do is get out of bed in the morning. I think it’s just as tough for young people. On an emotional level, a child’s anguish and a child’s joy are as intense as our own. Young people recognize their own inner lives while they journey through a world completely imaginary…

The best fantasy it seems to me, is permanently relevant. Because it deals metaphorically with basic human situations, it always has something to say to us. Also, I think that fantasy offers a certain vividness and high spiritedness unique to itself. We shouldn’t underestimate the value of sheer fun, delight, and excitement…

Dealing with the impossible, fantasy can show us what may be really possible. If there is grief, there is the possibility of consolation; if hurt, the possibility of healing; and above all, the curative power of hope. If fantasy speaks to us as we are, it also speaks to us as we might be. (Children’s Book Council Archives. )

In my opinion, fantastical elements in a story make it more interesting, but their presence also highlights the aspects that characterize our own lives and world. The good authors still leave you with something real, something that teaches you about yourself, if you strip away all the fantasy.

Perhaps that’s the reason I could never read more than one of Piers Anthony’s books. Strip away the fantasy, and all you have is silliness.

I think reading and even writing fantasy literature helps the creative juices flow, and when those juices are let loose, it’s hard to keep them from leaking into the technical realm. Creative technical writers solve problems. Inventive technical writers come up with effective ways to engage the reader. Imaginative technical writers can envision where they want to go and how to get there.

Not that you have to read fiction to be a creative technical writer, but I’m convinced that exercising the imagination in this way helps.

So that technical writer may daydream every once in a while. But you never know: That brief, faraway look may in reality be a gaze across the chasm, drawing upon the imagination that scene stimulates in order to accomplish his work.