Creating fantasies and legends is an adventure in exploration; anything is made there are no limitations of location, time, character development, architecture, art, or life forms. Cultures of all states are created, like sketching with words, some concept is discarded, then perhaps through trial and error gradually, a final world emerges from behind a curtain. Dreams in the creation process come into concrete reality, visually and in words. If possible, this could lead to film adaptions in the form of movies and animation.

I play with words, some sentences seem insane or there is a wish to discard them, I keep them in notebooks, and I don’t throw them out, because they are seeds of ideas. Perhaps some stories lead nowhere, gradually, as I write or draw, I chip away at the discarded levels, and later I realize they could yield something that inspires people at a later time. I believe anything is possible, with a fresh mind, I look at what I’ve done before, it is as if the creator is a ship venturing out to unknown seas to convey the concept to new peoples.

I write fantasy because it doesn’t limit me to the boxed-in constraints, of history, science, or religion. It’s an escape without outside simulations; I’m running away from daily reality, discarding the day’s dust.

Writing the imaginary world is like being a designer on a drawing board or working on a computer, constantly refining what is being created.

An idea comes to me when looking at a cluttered desk and being inspired that it might become a strange city of fantasy and imagination. I keep my mind in a void away from too much rational thinking. I asked the question why did one desk become disorganized? Perhaps a voice was telling find ideas in this cluster, thousands of ideas might be generated, and I just toss out the rationale.

I try to make efforts to toss away logic at certain times when I’m writing fantasy. It’s said people explained the world through legend, supernatural happenings perhaps in another way. I strike a balance between logic, code, and spirituality it doesn’t matter what others say; I write what is from my heart. I seek comfort from meditation and writing fantasies.

Through the combination of real-life experience, and interaction with people, fantasy is written, with the foods of imagination, as I’m writing, I’m not sure where the stories going it seems to be writing itself, sometimes, there’s an outline, yet it’s only a guide. Through stories, I imagine myself living on the highest mountain, the clouds below every morning, the sun is there as if the sun is perpetual, that is how I concentrate, believing I’m somewhere else.

To work on developing a culture, mythologies, art, and people that are fictional, to work on this to make mistakes to back up write something different, to continue to persevere to continue writing, refining the characters, places, and storylines. Once all the refining is completed that is when a new world is born.

When writing, I imagine New York City as a place that is a city filled with tree houses, giant trees with towering buildings connected through causeways to various parts of the trees. Ask and think the impossible, question what if history had gone in a different direction. I try to imagine a place that has direct contact with the heavens and spirits; then I write that if today’s religions never existed, that another religious way of thinking was divine, and our world never existed. Think differently from other people.

As I’m writing about fantasy, cultures, peoples, and places, hopefully, commonplace, what comes is that I’m writing a library of notebooks, they are references for future novels and poems.

Storing observations of real life is that gateway to fantasy, I try to write down what is observed and then exaggerate from commonplace becomes strange, a bus on the street, through imagination, transforms into a giant aquatic animal that resembles a machine a fire hydrant speaks, a park becomes somewhere in another time.

The mind opens, and fantasy is everywhere.

Robert J. Matsunaga