What is Making by the Law in Which We’re Made?

“Making by the Law in Which We’re Made” is a biweekly newsletter for anyone seeking intelligent yet lighthearted discussions on fantasy, literature, and creative writing. If you can name more than five hobbits or ever wondered if Toy Story is actually a philosophical debate between Aristotelian teleology and existentialism, welcome, I think you’ll like it in here (if they don’t throw you in a madhouse first).

And you are…?

I’m Gabriel Kwasinski de Sá Earp, Brazilian fiction writer. I wrote my first book, Soren, at fifteen years old, and I have not stopped since.

My best ideas always come from conversations. Debating at school about “what if different mythologies came together” gave origin to Soren. Watching West Side Story with my parents inspired me to write my short story Velha Capuleto, about an old, bitter Juliet. And most of my ideas on how fiction works came from long (loooong) discussions with either my friends or my brother.

An idea is just a bunch of chemicals in your brain until you put it into words — either by writing it down or by discussing it with others.

That is the philosophy behind Making by the Law in Which We’re Made. The best ideas come from people, so I want to put these ideas out in the world for people to see. Whether you think I’m a genius or an idiot, I just want you to think a little deeper, and have fun along the way.

What’s with the overly long name?

“Making by the Law in Which We’re Made” is a reference to J.R.R. Tolkien’s poem Mythopoeia, part of which is quoted in his On Fairy-Stories:

Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.

To this day, I have not seen a better (or more beautiful) explanation of this thing we clumsily call Stories.

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Ready? So let’s begin.