Staying with reality
That may sound a bit awkward. Of course you stay with reality, right?
Well… not so much when you’re writing. Books about space wars between only enemy aliens aren’t really reality yet, are they? Unless the world’s governments are keeping some interesting bits and pieces from us.
Note the little “only” up there. I didn’t include humans in that paragraph. And why? Because humans change the whole view on things. As soon as humans come into the picture, reality does as well, if only the bit of reality that surrounds those humans in their space war again, because humans come in sizes and shapes, they need food, rest and breathable air. Unless the author plans to get rid of them very quickly.
Reality is important in writing, even in fantasy writing like my Naked Crow series. In those stories I need real people as well, even though several of them are Shamen.
Did you see what I just did? I tricked you (or not). Shamen are real people too, it’s just that not everyone believes they do real shamanic things. Another character that has to be real is the kind old lady, Winny Schneider. She’s old and wrinkled, she lost her husband, and indirectly cancer took one of her breasts away. Just like something that happens to real people.
Why is this important?
Because of this. People who are too pretty. Too plastic surgery. Too close to the ‘ideal beauty’ that reigns at 
the moment (and do note that the moment keeps changing that ideal to keep emptying your pockets). In my writing I want to display real people. Wrinkled ones, with crooked teeth and pocked skin, because that is how we are naturally. People who lack grace, who lack limbs (like Harry Jennings, the man in the wheelchair in some of the Naked Crow stories).
Those are the real people. The people we meet every day. People who you encounter on nude beaches and who are treated the way they should be: like people who belong.
This is why, for me, it’s important to stay close to reality where it concerns people in writing naturist books.
This philosophy makes these stories more realistic and relatable especially for people who are interested in naturism yet worried they aren’t attractive enough in some way.It drives home the point that your mind and heart is what is real you.The body and skin is just the container.
That, my naturist friend, is exactly the point I want to make. Our world, our Internet, is so chock full with the wrong ideas and images, that every movement to counter that is important. This is how I try to do that.