I press 20-pound dumbbells over my chest, still sweating from my daily run on the treadmill. The rec center is filled with regulars. A late morning assortment of senior women, gym bros, and now that it’s summer, squads of fifteen-year-old boys doing more talking than working out.

I don’t ever try to guess what anyone is listening to, and I doubt anyone would guess what I’m listening to: Bianca Marais’ The Shit No One Tells You About Writing podcast. The only negative thing I have to say about this show is that there’s only one episode a week, and I’ve already listened to almost all the archives.

An episode with author Julie Carrick Dalton plays in my ear as I pump the weights. They discuss what place they write from. Bianca says she writes from a place of rage. Julie says she writes from a place of fear.

We all write from somewhere. And maybe one singular emotion pushes every writer to put words together constantly, like an unending game of Scrabble. I sit up after finishing a set to see my flushing red face in the mirror. What place do I write from? One word raises a bold and confident hand.

Want.

I’m not sure how I feel about that word at first. I think about it, like standing in front of a dressing room mirror. The dress fits over all my curves, but is it really my style?  

But the word Want fits well enough that I don’t think it matters if it’s my style. I don’t think that, as a writer, I am granted the luxury of choosing what spurs me to write. But I don’t like the word Want. It’s hard to swallow, like that putrid cough syrup I refused to take as a child.  

The word Want drags a great deal of baggage behind it, including two suitcases labeled lust and greed. Want reminds me of the two children that the Second Spirit shows to Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The boy is named Ignorance, and the girl is named Want. Their image is imprinted in my mind from the movie with Alastair Sim, along with the children’s haunting and barely explained appearance.

But what I forget is that the Spirit warns Scrooge to beware of them both, but mostly the boy. So perhaps we can tell Want to put her suitcase down and have a chat.

So, I move from the weight section to a yoga mat and think about what I write, and how Want fits into it.

I write fantasy. I could spend hours talking about fantasy and the origin of the genre. About myths, legends, and fairytales and how they became The Lord of the Rings and so many other stories. How stories throughout history blended what we would call fact and fiction. The beautiful creation of making secondary worlds. But all that is for another discussion.

Let’s get back to how Want and fantasy can fit through the same slot in the shape sorter.  

J.R.R. Tolkien was known for praising “fairy-stories” for their escapism. I have always thought that escapism is about want. A desperate desire for something else, something you don’t have, like Dorothy falling from a sepia world to one drenched in color. 

I never quite understood why Dorothy wanted to go home.

Maybe because I never reached the other side of the rainbow and instead am still chasing it. I’d dive down the rabbit hole if I ever found one. But I haven’t, so instead I write.  

But what is it that I want? Am I talking about literal rabbit holes? Not quite.

I want that something that wakes up inside Bilbo and makes him want to leave the quiet safety of the Shire. Fantasy is a genre embedded with a sense of adventure. It doesn’t matter what kind of adventure it is. It doesn’t matter if it ends happily ever after or if everyone dies. There just needs to be magic with a touch of something whimsical or a touch of something epic.  

But I can’t say that adventure is all I want. Otherwise, maybe I would become a travel writer or spend my weekends mountain climbing and skydiving. I’m not much of a thrill-seeker. I’ve never been on a roller coaster, and I get nervous in elevators.

But the taste of adventure is close to the taste of Want. The flavor is almost the same. The desire for something more—to grab something that’s hard to hold onto.  

I journal often, a habit I try to keep daily with inconsistent success. Sometimes I write to describe how a February morning feels, or sometimes I write a poem to gush my emotions out into the night before I shut off the lamp and go to bed.

But I write about the February morning with a desire not to lose it. I want to remember it. I write about how a sunset makes me feel because it makes me want something—makes me want another place I cannot see from the crowded skyline of my suburban window. And my emotions, always messy like a basket of forgotten, unspooled thread, want something.

Because I can’t seem to just look up at the moon and admire it. I look up at the moon and can only think of what it would be like to stand on its sandy surface with its barren horizon and nothing but blackness for a sky.

I write fantasy because of the desire I have when I sit by the lake. It’s an intense desire I can’t quite describe. I can’t put what I want on a wish list. Like the sun and the lake and the waves are a promise of something just out of my reach. When I read and write fantasy, I feel like I can finally touch it and fold it into my palm.

Fantasy drenches me like a rainstorm when the sun has touched me too much. Keeps me coming back like a wolf to a carcass until it is picked clean.

Because fantasy allows me to explore all those wants and desires. Fantasy is a train that allows me to travel wherever I wish, to different places, feelings, emotions.

And if that’s what Want means to me, that doesn’t sound so bad, not so greedy and ugly. It’s human to want, after all. Perhaps one of the most human things to do. We want food and water and sunlight on our faces.

But I want just a little bit more.            

I leave the gym and feel comfortable with Want by my side, suitcase in hand.