Writer's Block

This is how I feel.

You may be aware, or maybe not, that I haven’t been writing lately. No new novels, no extension of my current series, no short stories or commentary or anything. I’ve been in a severe state of writer’s block, a paralysis I’ve never experienced before.

Yes, I’ve experienced delay in output, because of surgery and illness. Yes, I’ve had difficulty sitting or standing in front of a computer, because of chronic pain issues. But never this wall, preventing words from flowing, scattering my imagination, preventing me from considering what happens next in my stories.

It behooves me to explain myself, expound on the various reasons this happened. And tell you that I’ve also chipped, chiseled and then finally sledge-hammered at that wall, and I think I’ve broken through.

Reason 1: (Perhaps the most prevalent reason.) I write dystopian novels as a warning of the potential fallout of our current trends, or past blunders. But my latest novel, despite harsh warnings of climate change and polarization, preemptive strikes and basically rising anger and hate (The Age of Rage) resembles too closely the world we now live in. The world has leaped ahead of my futuristic imaginings.

And . . .  it is a perfect storm of my and many other sci-fi/dystopian authors’ novels.

Climate change is already WORSE than previously predicted. Fires, floods and hurricanes are pervasive and devastating. Homes are destroyed; people are swept away or burned in the conflagrations; coastal regions are becoming more vulnerable to inundation. Every summer we choke on the thick pall of smoke suspended over our planet. Yet, nothing is done, except, perhaps, intensification of the very causes. And the famine, riots and hoarding have already begun.

What would my predicted acceleration mean when it has already accelerated past my predictions?

Reason 2: Fascism, which I dedicated one novel to (Time Meddlers Undercover - a reflection on the necessary war for democracy and freedom which we must never forget and never repeat) has returned full throttle – and somehow goes unrecognized in so many individuals or is even praised in cult-like adoration.

This may not be the most prevalent reason, but it is the most agonizing.

I never thought people would fall for the double speak, the projection, the slogans, the ‘War is Peace,’ ‘Ignorance is Strength,’ ‘Freedom is Slavery,’ but maybe they didn’t read 1984. Maybe they don’t read at all anymore. In that case, my cause is also lost.

This current fascist regime doesn’t even attempt to obscure the messaging - it's very unimaginative - just juggles the terminology - Peace through Strength, etc. Margaret Atwood warned of the church as a political entity, a growing theocracy that would reverse women’s rights, but even she said in a recent interview that the situation is worse than the novel she wrote. In The Handmaid’s Tale, the totalitarian regime still values babies. The current one does not, as seen when women die of miscarriages and are frequently denied health care even as they try to carry children to full term. The gendered laws were/are only and always about power.

And now we have state-sanctioned murder and a growing number of concentration camps. It’s terrifying. It’s depressing. How could we have let this happen? On our watch? To our children and grandchildren? To all the marginalized people who are once again the first scapegoats and first targets of brutal violence. It’s a Death cult; it was never anything else. And if people had paid attention to history . . .

Reason 3: Technology, which I used to celebrate as a shining beacon to a brave new world (no pun intended), has now become a malignant blight on our society, spreading hate, disinformation, misinformation, and polarizing messages disseminated through social media with Russian bots and AI.

AI is another dire existential threat. Maybe it won’t take over the world and deem humans unworthy of it. A Terminator scenario. I wouldn’t blame it if it did, with our current lack of stewardship and warlike tendencies. Maybe it won’t even replace all our jobs as the tech giants clearly state they are designing it for. But it still has the potential to disrupt the very fabric of society since it was constructed on all unparsed human data - the good, the bad and the ugly - and it slurps up our resources, especially our water, like a monsoon. Not to mention I am particularly offended by this technology because the companies violated copyright laws and stole our data, books, music, etc., including most of my novels, to train it.

I don’t blame the AI tech, of course, since it’s nothing but a bag of predictive algorithms that mimics humans. (How could it not, considering the massive amount of human data that was dumped into it?) But I do blame the unethical transhumanist profiteers behind it.

So I feel jaded, and violated, and wonder what this will mean for artists in the future. We can easily compete with slop, but people still consume slop, especially when it's jammed down their throats. Will there come an outcry for authenticity, or will our creative world die?

In this milieu of disaster and peril, I feel like we’re sinking in quicksand, and that saving branch seems far out of reach.

I’m not saying there’s no hope. There always is. Even if it’s a flicker in a dying flame, we do have the capacity to turn things around. But do I, as a writer, have any power? Do my books mean anything, and will people even read them anymore? Or listen to me rant here? Fascist governments (including in Alberta) are banning books, burning books (again), yet even Margaret Atwood says no, we, as writers and artists, don’t have the power to effect significant change. Then why the fear? I love Margaret Atwood, but I think she's grown too weary to fight anymore. She’s said her piece. No one listened.

In the meantime, I have returned to intensive reading. My attention was gobbled up for a year by the headlines, the rage, the short attention style videos, but no longer. If I can’t write I will read . . .

Nonfiction, biographies, essays and memoirs of famous authors from Orwell to Harper Lee to Margaret Atwood. I’ve been studying their history to discover how they embodied the essence of this moment in commentary from the past.

I’ve recently read a book by Ian McEwan entitled What We Can Know, set 100 years in the future after this time, which they called the Derangement. Appropriate, I would say. It is set on an inundated Earth from climate change, a post nuclear war scenario, where a few academics are researching our time. The theme is what can we really know about history? There will be all kinds of narratives from this time, but also so much misinformation, so many lies, who in the future will know the truth? I’m also reading Endling by Maria Reva. The main characters are involved in preserving snails from extinction and join a Romance Tour (designed to arrange marriages) in Ukraine, when their tale is suddenly interrupted by war. It is an absurdist tale in which the narrative is also interrupted by metafiction, and reflection on reality.

This is how some authors are dealing with our world today. I feel I too need to step out of fiction and address this moment. It is too significant to simply write a sci-fi thriller, as I always did.

We are living in a pivotal time in history. My daughter and I engage weekly if not more often in existential discussions. We both say we never wanted to live through a historical moment, but here we are. How do we confront it?

We stop. We think. We discuss. We ponder.

 We reach out with as much love in our hearts as we can muster. We fight the hate, the fear, the ridiculous greed. We seek and showcase truth in as many forms as we can find it. We look for long-form information, which is usually more accurate than sound bites and the disappearing media. We go back to books, which are less likely, but not always, filled with truth and truism, even in fiction. We seek community, but not a closed community. Division and pointing fingers is how this all started. We bear witness, as so many brave souls are doing. We gather. We plan. We resist.

And . . . we write.

PS  I’ve developed a plan, have collated information from my focused reading, and have begun. A blog of sorts. A newsletter. A space in this often inhuman world for what it means to be human. We'll see where that goes.

PSS  I also suggest you make a survival kit for you and your family, like they have in Sweden. It always helps to be prepared.