Failed Writer's Journey: Why Write in Bad Times

These are not good times.

The Administration is lying about a woman, Renee Goode, that one of their agents shot dead for no reason and then lied both about the victim and the event. It has also claimed it has taken control of another country for purely mercenary reasons. Things are not good, to be kind. So why waste time writing?

My writing is never going to change the world. I am a failed writer, remember. No one outside of beta readers has ever read a bit of my fiction and it is likely no one ever will. Even if I do manage to get published and read, it is vanishingly unlikely that my writing, or anyone’s writing, will suddenly engender a miraculous change of heart. People do not work like that, especially in this day and age. To the extent that entertainment and art changes people’s minds or personalties, it does so because it finds a way to express a desire that is already present in the person. In the same way that nuclear fission was floating in the air in the physics world in the 1930s, waiting to manifest, a book that “changes the world” does so because it becomes the manifestation of a popular feeling already present, not because it created that feeling. The slow, steady accretion of emotions, art, and experience drives change, not a publishing contract.

So why bother?

For the same reason that you should go on walks, or watch sports, or play music, or complete a puzzle or video game. Human beings are not meant to experience stress constantly. It wears you down, makes you sick. You cannot spend all your time focused on the worst. You must find some way to allow your mind and body to recover from the stress. Otherwise, you become less and less capable of dealing with the world. That is one of the reasons they are so blatant in their lies: they want you stressed and overwhelmed by their bullshit. We don’t know how this is going to end, or how long it is going to take to wrench the country back to a liberal democracy. We just know that it is worth doing. It is okay, it is important, to make sure you do what you need to be there for the whole time.

Nothing I am saying, of course, is surprising or new. And maybe it is just self-justification for turning away from the world for a bit. I don’t think so, but it is possible. All I know, for myself, is that writing helps make facing the world as it is easier (odd, given that my finished novel is about a woman in tech trying to keep her bosses from missing her work to punish woman who get abortions ….). Helping others requires effort. Stress saps the strength needed for that effort. Anything you do to reduce that stress, to allow yourself the space to recover, is probably more helpful than doomscrolling.

Weekly Word Count

Zero. So much for avoiding the stress.

I finished the latest draft of my political thriller and am now playing with three ideas, seeing which one falls out neatly:

1. A story based on the judge in PA that took bribes to send kids to a particular prison. In this story, a IT security expert is drawn into a potential conspiracy involving judges, for profit prisons, and AI based sentencing software. Can he survive long enough to discover the real crime?

2. An AI as literal necromancy story. Our hero notices that his coworkers becoming more and more zombie like as they use the latest AI coding and art generation tools. But when people close to him start disappearing, he discovers that the tool is literally devouring their souls. But to what end? And can he stop it before he and everyone he loves is consumed by the monster at the heart of the industry?

3. Proper English magic. A girl survives getting her head stuck in a machine during the Luddite era (something, that actually happened) by making a deal with the Fae for magic. She turns on the factory owners whose unconcern and greed nearly killed her, becoming a general in Ned Ludd’s army. But deals with the Fae come with a high price, a price high enough that it could cost her the lives and futures of everyone she cares about. I’d be leaning heavily on Blood in the Machine by Brian Merchant and Johnathon Strange and Mr. Norrell (yes, I realize Suzanne Clark is a genius and I am not, but it always nagged at me that she had a book about English magic and essentially ignored the Luddites)

Whichever one plots out easiest will likely be my next project. I am also likely to lean into what I did for Sarah Smit: plot→script→iterate plot and script→book. Doing the plot/character revisions in script form is easier and faster for me. It seems to be a decent set of tools to get me through the process.

Have a great weekend.