I’ve started reading though my novel out loud to edit it. My course has been taking a break over the Easter holidays but I haven’t! I decided to query it with another agent again, which I did a few days ago, thought about it, edited some more, and then queried another.

I don’t want to hold onto any perfectionist ideals, and have opted to send out the novel now, as agents can get the idea of the story while it’s still in the process. Plus, agents can take weeks getting back to you so I thought I might as well try now. Each time I send my work out I get better at pitching it.

Something the teacher of my course said really stuck with me: that the themes of children’s books can be summed up as ‘Hero Vs Peril.’ This really made me think, as I don’t have an overarching villain in Alice in Wheelchairland. What is the peril?

I’ve realised the peril is fantasy itself. The novel is about escapism, the pull between wonder and hiding. Alice finds her perfect world, but does she want to stay? If you can hide in your ideal world, why would you want to go back to mundane, exhausting, disappointing reality? I guess the story attempts to answer this question, but by showing, not telling. It is for the reader to draw their own conclusions.

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This theme has been one that has interested me for a long time. Growing up in the 00s, I experienced a lot of video games. Now I’m an adult, I’m not really interested in playing games, but I’m more tempted to when I’m stressed, to distract myself. I think the same is true for any kind of game or entertainment. But why is our experience of games so different as children?

I obviously can’t hope to answer this question, but I’m always interested in how people get sucked into escapism. I was thinking about why this is, and my memory took me back to what I was doing at the new millennium, when 1999 became the year 2000. I remember our family went to a party at our friends’ house. The children, there were quite a lot of us, were all allowed to play video games upstairs late into the night, and I remember my incredulous surprise that I had been allowed to stay up so late! I have an awful memory of trying to play the Playstation game ‘Madagascar’ and becoming trapped in the level because I couldn’t work out how to complete it. If I close my eyes I can still recall being that lost zebra running through the jungle trying to find my way out.

I looked it up and it turns out the ‘Madagascar’ game came out in 2005, so I couldn’t possibly have been playing it in 2000. I was also only 4 at the party, and I can’t imagine any of the older kids there let me hold the Playstation controls. But I definitely did get lost in that game at some point. I think the feeling of not being clever enough to outwit a game and becoming stressed by it is one most people can relate to. Maybe it links back to perfectionism, and only wanting to do things we know we’ll succeed at?

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I guess sometimes we are just a lost zebra stuck in the jungle trying to find the way out. But real life is not a video game! There is no start or end and no clear point where we’ve won and beaten the game. Which is maybe obvious and maybe I’ve said it before. But I feel like I have to remind myself, because being a fantasy writer inherently means I’m more susceptible to fantasy, and need to remind myself of reality. Which is why I don’t want to try and guess the outcome of my queries, and take the wonder as it comes.

Whilst I’ve thought a lot about the good and bad things about escapism, I don’t want to hide from my life! But stories are about more than escaping, they are about feeling and learning. Which is one of those things we say with gritted teeth as an answer to things not going perfectly. “It’s not perfect, but I’m learning.”
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(Feature Image is some of Yorkio Ito’s concept art for the film Madagascar (2005)).