This could have been titled, why I don’t get cosplay.

I was sitting on the couch, watching yet another romcom with my mother after dinner, and my right leg began to be restless. It wasn’t bad. I didn’t have to get up. Yet it shook something in my thinking. Somehow, the NOVA episode on sleep, discussions about cosplay and why I don’t do it, but also writing for the first time in more than a year—and writing a whole draft in a mere 38 days—came together.

I realized that I gallop in my dreams when I run.

In real life I walk and sometimes jog, regularly. On good days I go about five miles. I like interval running. I call it my “woggle”.  I don’t run or walk fast.  In real life I run like a normal person with an even gait. I don’t supinate or pronate. If you’re someone who gets good walking or running shoes, you probably know what that means. It means my feet don’t roll in or out while I walk or run.

Which makes this weirder.   

When I think about running, I discovered—honestly I hadn’t grasped this at all—I envision that I’m galloping on the trails I traverse. Like a child’s pretend gallop on a hobby horse. I don’t dream I’m galloping because I’m some dreamy version of a horse. Not a gorgeous horse like gait at all. An awkward one with my right leg gimpy. Even now, thinking about the joy I had running just yesterday. It’s as if I have to impose the thought of what it really was like onto this idea of me dragging my right, restless leg into the best it can do.

What in the world does that have to do with cosplay?

I was telling a friend about how I wished I could connect more with readers. I love talking with readers, and even created a regular event just to do so, and for books by other writers.  Writing fantasy, I dream about one day having the freedom to do conventions. I’d love to participate. More: I certainly would adore it if people did cosplay of my characters or worlds—truly. I’d be honored.  But… I don’t get it. I can’t understand why people have to dress up to get into characters, or be part of a world.

I felt, quite honestly, as if I was at fault for not being able to understand it. It was a huge failing of mine. Proof I don’t know how to have fun.  

Even while I can forgive myself, now, I honestly do look on with deep, deep wishful thinking.

And then I was writing again, and Ihyel was back, and Pyran, and Cemirowl and new characters.  I’d be listening for them when I needed to write the next scene, the next chapter.  I was able to connect with other cultures, and even other worlds, and other characters.  I realized I am almost always, always, half there while I’m writing. 

How close?  How close is that world? 

Like “memories” of me galloping… instead of running. 

I’d love to wear some elaborate costume, maybe even wings (…that book is not yet published, but I have developmental notes from my fabulous editor) but then I think: I just want to get ON with it. On with writing.  I want to sit down at my desk, without the fuss. Plain pants, plain shirt are sufficient.  They don’t get in my way. I can be deep in that world, and it’s right there. Like memories, and pretty solid ones too. I actually can’t even picture them, but they’re always like an echo of a memory, a memory of a dream, or a memory of a party I went to. It just wasn’t, well, here. 

It’s a bit like reading a great book, watching a good movie or… like dreaming of flying, or dreaming of galloping because my right leg gets restless.

I don’t have a need to become a character; I’m hanging out with them all the time anyway—the character you don’t see.  I write my “memories” and this life on other planets as if they’re just as real.  

Yet, just like my galloping dreams envying my real running: I’ll watch cosplayers with yearning. For now, I can only hope that readers will find my sharing of my dreams, my culture, my world good enough to join me in cosplay. I’ll be there too, even if not in costume.  Because I gallop in my dreams, and in the real world my leg is restless.