"I've always found it easy and natural and, more importantly, necessary to articulate thoughts and feelings, and fierce emotions, through the written word. Fantasy and horror came to me when I was very young"
About this Quote
Writing is framed here less as a craft than as a pressure valve: “necessary” is the tell. Kim Elizabeth isn’t romanticizing the page as a tasteful pastime; she’s describing it as a survival instinct, the place where “thoughts and feelings, and fierce emotions” can be metabolized into something legible. The list builds in intensity, moving from the tidy (“thoughts”) to the ungovernable (“fierce emotions”), and the written word becomes the only medium sturdy enough to hold the full range without spilling.
That emphasis on articulation signals a specific intent: to claim authorship over inner weather that might otherwise dictate the terms of her life. Subtextually, it also suggests a mismatch between what can be expressed aloud and what can be handled on the page. Writing is “easy and natural” not because the emotions are simple, but because the form gives them structure. On paper, chaos can be revised.
The pivot to “Fantasy and horror” adds cultural and psychological context. These genres aren’t escapism so much as technology: fantasy offers distance, horror offers honesty. Both are ways of telling the truth obliquely, granting permission to exaggerate what everyday language often minimizes - fear, rage, desire, dread. Saying they “came to me when I was very young” hints at an early acquaintance with intensity; the imagination arrived as a companion and a shield.
For a contemporary writer, this is also an argument about legitimacy. Genre becomes the native language of emotion, not a lesser shelf in the bookstore. The line quietly insists: my monsters aren’t decorations; they’re my method.
That emphasis on articulation signals a specific intent: to claim authorship over inner weather that might otherwise dictate the terms of her life. Subtextually, it also suggests a mismatch between what can be expressed aloud and what can be handled on the page. Writing is “easy and natural” not because the emotions are simple, but because the form gives them structure. On paper, chaos can be revised.
The pivot to “Fantasy and horror” adds cultural and psychological context. These genres aren’t escapism so much as technology: fantasy offers distance, horror offers honesty. Both are ways of telling the truth obliquely, granting permission to exaggerate what everyday language often minimizes - fear, rage, desire, dread. Saying they “came to me when I was very young” hints at an early acquaintance with intensity; the imagination arrived as a companion and a shield.
For a contemporary writer, this is also an argument about legitimacy. Genre becomes the native language of emotion, not a lesser shelf in the bookstore. The line quietly insists: my monsters aren’t decorations; they’re my method.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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