Timothy's Thoughts

T oday is Thanksgiving, so in celebration of that event I thought I’d talk about a common misconception. Many people believe that turkeys can’t fly, but if you’ve ever seen one out in the wild then you know that is clearly not true. As the video below shows, turkeys are quite adept at flight. Okay, so they have the grace of a duck, but they can certainly fly. But you may have noticed that these turkeys are leaner than the farm raised birds we feast on each Thanksgiving. I’m sure there’s some analogy to writing in there somewhere, but I’m not even going to try. I hope you have a wonderful time with family and friends as we celebrate surviving another year.

Happy Thanksgiving! If you are reading this on Thanksgiving Day, you ought to get something for your dedication—a free book, a hundred dollar bill, a free turkey, something. But no, I’m not giving out any of those things. All I have to offer are my thoughts on writing about holidays. When we include a holiday in a novel, there is a tendency for it to over power the novel. If you mention Christmas, you might as well call the book a Christmas novel. If you mention Valentine’s Day, the book might as well have a pink cover. For all practical purposes, holidays don’t occur in Fantasia except when the author wants to talk about a particular holiday. Holidays carry with them some requirements of their own. If we write about Veteran’s Day we can expect it to involve the armed forces. Ground Hog’s Day stories had better have a ground hog. Christmas is the big one. Christmas stories are about family, peace, the jolly old elf, magic and some other things. We deviate from these things to keep it i...