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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2vlBQso:
nothing2c:
textualdeviance:
warrenellis:
Okay. Someone asked me how I feel about writing fiction in a world that still needs actual activism and hands-on work to make life better. They said something similar to, “I get pulled away from writing fiction because I feel guilty for not making tangible benefit to the world. Isn’t fiction just escapism?”
But I also got the following message, which I’m filing some of the serial numbers off of, as it were:
“I just wanted to tell you something. When I was 18 years old, my life was a fucking mess. I worked at a store that sold comic books and one day I stumbled upon Spider and the filthy assistants. Your comic kept me from killing myself. There is a character limit here so I can’t say everything I want to but thank you. From the very deepest part of my heart.”
I post this not to self-aggrandise. It is not a unique message, for good or ill. I get them surprisingly regularly. Frankly, messages like that scare the hell out of me, because I’m not very smart and not a very clever writer and I fuck up all the time.
But fiction speaks to people. Even fiction like mine acts to tell someone, somewhere, that they’re not alone.
You want tangible, social benefits to writing fiction? There are people walking around today because other people wrote words that spoke to them. That’ll do.
And thank you.
I can, on some level, acknowledge that my work has the potential to make a difference, if not on a large scale, at least for someone. My goal as an author has always been to tell the same kinds of SFF stories I’ve always loved, but with characters who are something other than the attractive cishet white people who have dominated the genre. We’re finally getting more of that these days, across all media, but it’s not like there will ever really be enough. My work may not be great art, and it has yet to get wide attention, but it’s out there, and maybe it can help someone somewhere.
Where the problem comes in for me right now is that such benefits are long-term and big-picture. They’re butterfly-effect things when we’re in an immediate crisis that requires something bigger and more tangible. I’d love for a queer, half-Egyptian kid to see himself in my story and know he deserves to be a protagonist, but when kids with Middle-Eastern features, whether Muslim or no, are being labeled “terrorists” and threatened with deportation or worse, such benefits are rather less critical in comparison. I feel like I should be doing something more immediate than simply adding to the diversity of genre media.
Beyond that, I also have my own fears. I have the benefits of being native-born, English-speaking, white, somewhat cis-passing, in a legal marriage, financially comfortable (for now) and living in a very blue area of a very blue state. But those things alone aren’t enough to keep me off the list of undesirables. I’m also atheist, queer, genderqueer, fat, have expensive physical and mental health conditions and am an adoptive parent of a child with autism. I’m also a very vocal feminist and publicly dissident. Beyond that, many of my loved ones are even higher on the “undesirable” list. We may be fairly well protected here in our liberal corner of the country for now, but it wouldn’t take many changes in federal law to put us and our families at risk. All it would take is for atheist, queer, Trans and/or not-perfectly-healthy parents to be declared unfit, and our kids could be taken away from us. In such a situation, how can I justify wasting hours immersing myself in writing fiction? I have to be working to stop this.
But that comes to the other problem: There isn’t much I can do that I’m not already doing. We have to be careful with money right now for various reasons, but we’ve donated to orgs that are fighting this and helping people in far more dire circumstances. I’m lucky that all of my government reps are awesome, and I’ve made a point of telling them so and encouraging them to keep up the good fight. But aside from voting and volunteering for registration and GOTV drives, there’s not much else I can do. My health and responsibility to my child preclude me doing boots-on-the-ground stuff, and anyone who would ever be inclined to listen to my anti-bigotry campaigning already is. The only thing left, then, is trying to save my energy and secure my own mask, so to speak, so if the wolves start threatening to come to my door, I can get the hell out of the country or go to ground before they get here.
So it’s rock and hard place, I guess. I want to write, but I’m too afraid of missing a sign that I’m in immediate danger, and also feel like I should be doing something more (even though there’s not much more I can do.) Making art is always worthwhile, I know, but I can’t help feeling that my own work isn’t a big enough deal to justify the time/energy sink. Writing seems self-indulgent, maybe, when the world is on fire.
This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, but not in the context of whether or not to create art. More like, I’ve been wondering how I can create more art, because storytelling is one of the best ways to create compassion, understanding of others, and seeds for people’s activism.
So to all the storytellers out there, NEVER UNDERESTIMATE the power of a griot, someone who speaks to people with hope and power and gives them patterns for how to continue living.
nothing2c:
textualdeviance:
warrenellis:
Okay. Someone asked me how I feel about writing fiction in a world that still needs actual activism and hands-on work to make life better. They said something similar to, “I get pulled away from writing fiction because I feel guilty for not making tangible benefit to the world. Isn’t fiction just escapism?”
But I also got the following message, which I’m filing some of the serial numbers off of, as it were:
“I just wanted to tell you something. When I was 18 years old, my life was a fucking mess. I worked at a store that sold comic books and one day I stumbled upon Spider and the filthy assistants. Your comic kept me from killing myself. There is a character limit here so I can’t say everything I want to but thank you. From the very deepest part of my heart.”
I post this not to self-aggrandise. It is not a unique message, for good or ill. I get them surprisingly regularly. Frankly, messages like that scare the hell out of me, because I’m not very smart and not a very clever writer and I fuck up all the time.
But fiction speaks to people. Even fiction like mine acts to tell someone, somewhere, that they’re not alone.
You want tangible, social benefits to writing fiction? There are people walking around today because other people wrote words that spoke to them. That’ll do.
And thank you.
I can, on some level, acknowledge that my work has the potential to make a difference, if not on a large scale, at least for someone. My goal as an author has always been to tell the same kinds of SFF stories I’ve always loved, but with characters who are something other than the attractive cishet white people who have dominated the genre. We’re finally getting more of that these days, across all media, but it’s not like there will ever really be enough. My work may not be great art, and it has yet to get wide attention, but it’s out there, and maybe it can help someone somewhere.
Where the problem comes in for me right now is that such benefits are long-term and big-picture. They’re butterfly-effect things when we’re in an immediate crisis that requires something bigger and more tangible. I’d love for a queer, half-Egyptian kid to see himself in my story and know he deserves to be a protagonist, but when kids with Middle-Eastern features, whether Muslim or no, are being labeled “terrorists” and threatened with deportation or worse, such benefits are rather less critical in comparison. I feel like I should be doing something more immediate than simply adding to the diversity of genre media.
Beyond that, I also have my own fears. I have the benefits of being native-born, English-speaking, white, somewhat cis-passing, in a legal marriage, financially comfortable (for now) and living in a very blue area of a very blue state. But those things alone aren’t enough to keep me off the list of undesirables. I’m also atheist, queer, genderqueer, fat, have expensive physical and mental health conditions and am an adoptive parent of a child with autism. I’m also a very vocal feminist and publicly dissident. Beyond that, many of my loved ones are even higher on the “undesirable” list. We may be fairly well protected here in our liberal corner of the country for now, but it wouldn’t take many changes in federal law to put us and our families at risk. All it would take is for atheist, queer, Trans and/or not-perfectly-healthy parents to be declared unfit, and our kids could be taken away from us. In such a situation, how can I justify wasting hours immersing myself in writing fiction? I have to be working to stop this.
But that comes to the other problem: There isn’t much I can do that I’m not already doing. We have to be careful with money right now for various reasons, but we’ve donated to orgs that are fighting this and helping people in far more dire circumstances. I’m lucky that all of my government reps are awesome, and I’ve made a point of telling them so and encouraging them to keep up the good fight. But aside from voting and volunteering for registration and GOTV drives, there’s not much else I can do. My health and responsibility to my child preclude me doing boots-on-the-ground stuff, and anyone who would ever be inclined to listen to my anti-bigotry campaigning already is. The only thing left, then, is trying to save my energy and secure my own mask, so to speak, so if the wolves start threatening to come to my door, I can get the hell out of the country or go to ground before they get here.
So it’s rock and hard place, I guess. I want to write, but I’m too afraid of missing a sign that I’m in immediate danger, and also feel like I should be doing something more (even though there’s not much more I can do.) Making art is always worthwhile, I know, but I can’t help feeling that my own work isn’t a big enough deal to justify the time/energy sink. Writing seems self-indulgent, maybe, when the world is on fire.
This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, but not in the context of whether or not to create art. More like, I’ve been wondering how I can create more art, because storytelling is one of the best ways to create compassion, understanding of others, and seeds for people’s activism.
So to all the storytellers out there, NEVER UNDERESTIMATE the power of a griot, someone who speaks to people with hope and power and gives them patterns for how to continue living.
