This has been a hard news week. Devastating oil spills, racist laws, memories of Kent State, and tragic flooding in Nashville. Sitting isolated at my desk, I start to question the worth of what I do. When the real world seems to be falling apart around us, does it make sense to turn to fiction?

And the only answer I can come up with is, yes. Yes it does.

Because the only thing I know what to do with my despair and uncertainty is turn to the page. I put my questions down sentence by bewildered sentence. Hoping my characters will be able to find meaning in all this ugliness and create something hopeful with it.

Fiction is our way of making sense of things in a world that doesn’t make sense. In imaginary worlds, we can talk about issues in a context that seems safer than our everyday life. And, in a story, the world must have consistent rules and satisfying, if not hopeful, endings.

Discussing difficult issues has long been the domain of science fiction and, at times, fantasy. It’s no accident that Star Trek had the first interracial kiss on TV. Or that the show has often explored gender roles in both work and love. That distance of time and space allow us, as a culture, to discuss issues that are too difficult in reality.

So when I despair over whether we as a species, a culture, a community will ever grow out of our small-mindedness… Or when I wonder whether we will destroy ourselves before we learn how to take care of our planet… Or life simply seems too cruel…then I let my doubts play themselves out on the page. I give smart, brave characters the same fears I’m struggling with, the same obstacles, and trust that they will find a way out. Through this process I feel the characters’ pain and their doubts, but I also feel something else. Hope.

As a reader or a writer, when I turn to the page, I find hope there. Hope as I watch characters fight to survive whatever is thrown at them. Hope as they find solutions in spite of themselves, in spite of their situations. And I bring that hope back with me. Through the page. Into the world. And then I hold on tight.

Posted in Writing

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