Loving Writing; Being a Writer

“I just love writing. It's magical, it's somewhere else to go, it's somewhere much more dreadful, somewhere much more exciting. Somewhere I feel I belong, possibly more than in the so-called real world.” – Tanith Lee

Born during this week in 1947, Lee was one of the most prolific British writers of the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries, authoring nearly 100 novels, 300 short stories, a children's picture book, poems, and episodes of the BBC science fiction series Blake's 7.  Lee, who died in 2015, was the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award best novel for her book Death's Master – the second novel in her “Flat Earth” series.  Lee died in 2015.

Vibrant is a word often used by critics when writing about her works.  But perhaps the best thing that might be said about her writing style is that it can’t be categorized, something that definitely helped her broad readership base.  

Once when asked, she said she was greatly influenced by the historical novelist Mary Renault, (who wrote some terrific works on Ancient Greece), but then she quickly added “Oh, and C.S. Lewis.     Actually,” she said, “I love writers all across the board, so I’ve been influenced by many.”  She said her own vivid imagination also shaped her writing career.

“At an early school, when I was about 5, they asked what we wanted to be when we grew up. Everyone said silly things, and I said I wanted to be an actress. So that was what I wanted to be.  But what I was, of course, was a writer.”

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