Random Writings

Hard Times, Good Writing and Other Consolations

Hey, Folks,

I'm sending this announcement to my all my creative writing students this term, as I think it's important (though perhaps a little self-indulgent).  It's been a hard week for the world, and it is quite possible there are some more to follow.  Some of you may feel depressed, anxious, panicked or powerless, and those are all legitimate feelings,  except for that last one.

Writers, artists, musicians, and people in general are never, in fact, powerless.  We may be powerless in certain contexts or situations (i.e. we may not be able to make a vaccine or change global policies) but we are never without power to do decent, helpful and kind things for others or, in the case of the artistically inclined, make beautiful things for the world.  The trick to not feeling powerless is this; do the wonderful things you have the power to do.

Some of you may be avoiding social situations or finding your social plans fall out from under you.  But here's the silver lining; you're a writer, you're a reader.  Free time is free time, so use it.  Write poems, write stories.  On the nights you can't sleep, get out of bed and make things with words.  Write elegant lines about vaccines and Vikings slaughtering bacteria monsters in a jungle; write whatever you need to  in order to get through, write things that make you feel triumphant and hopeful about tomorrow.  Words, in the end, are bridges.  Bridges between yourself and your feelings and thoughts, bridges between you and others, bridges between you and the future.  When you feel isolated and powerless, build bridges.  Tell stories.  Make beauty.  Write.

And read.  Take the time to pick up that massive book you never had time to crack but have always wanted to, and go to it.  If you can't get out, get out of your head and into someone else's.   Go to whatever world you want to on the page, but try to avoid too much doom and gloom.  Read stories that remind you that life goes on, that people will still live and breathe and fall in love and care and hurt and all of the other things that make us human, because we do and we will (always keep in mind that Gabriel Garcia Marquez's brilliant Love in The Time of Cholera is ultimately about love, not cholera).  And if you have kids, this would be an amazing time to read with them and to them.  Give them good stories, because a lot of what they'll be getting in the media won't leave them with the sense of wonder and hope they need.

As the graphic novelist Eleanor Davis said, "Find the stories that make you strong."  Or the poems.  And if you can't find them, write them.   Other advice; help where you can, be kind always and take good care of yourselves and your people.  Do and make the things you can, because light is still there, just a little hidden, and when it shines again, it should shine on wonders.

And your homework is still due on Sunday.