making fire

[talonkarrde]

Once upon a time, I wrote an entry on Making Fire; and in that entry, I paid tribute to the writers that I was competing with then. Today, with that topic once again given, I thought that it would only be fitting to again pay tribute my fellow writers — as has been done in the final rounds of seasons past!

This entry was the easiest to write for me, because it is one that has been on my mind for a long time. I am going to do something slightly different and not link to individual entries, but rather try and paint you a picture of who they are as writers overall, and the magic that they bring to writing.

beautyofgrey  is someone that, simply put, deserves happiness. That to me is the alpha and the omega, and her happiness makes me a bit happier, and when she writes about her suffering, I feel that it is suffering that we should all bear to ease it on her. She has been through a lot, no doubt, and her writing shows that — without, indeed, expoiting it. She talks about difficulties and terrible things that I could never think about facing, but even as she writes to connect to people, to show them the debts of dark hurt and the height of great happiness, it never, for a moment, feels cheap, it never feels that it was written simply to make you go ‘oh no’.

Do you know why that is? It’s because it wasn’t. It was written to connect to people, to inspire and to delight and to show that even in the darkest of times, there is hope. And that’s why she’s the Spirit of LJ Idol, something she fully deserves, and that’s why she should win. There is little more to be said — except that there is a lot(!) more to be said, about her fantastic fiction (and beautiful fables), her ability to weave a tale, her ability to take you to lands that only she has ever seen.

But at the end of it all, I think she is a writer that, with a line, a paragraph, and then, an entry, has drawn you into a world and made you feel what she felt. That is power.

rattsu  takes a different path. She can connect, oh, yes, but her skill, her ability, is in teaching. Instead of drawing you inside, she takes you outside, to everything around us, and shows us what things are, and what things could be. She can write a post on something that we think is very familiar to us — elephants, perhaps — and show us a stunning, incredible other side, one that we would never have known existed without her. She reveals the unknown in the known, and then takes us on journeys to those worlds that we didn’t, letting us be tourists and her playing the part of the intelligent, excellent guide.

It's writing like this that will change the world, really change the world, by changing viewpoints and inspiring action. And that's why she should win.

But(!) she also writes fiction, and she writes it as well as her educational nonfiction, with characters that are incredible and scenes that draw you in. It shouldn't be to anyone's surprise that she's published, and I would only be incredibly surprised if she doesn't continue to be.

Typically, at this point, we've also been told to write a bit about why we should win. But see, that wasn't in this week's topic, so I won't interpret it that way.

These are my fellow writers, my friends, and this is the the incredibly bright, light-giving, life-giving fire that they create.