Write what you want.

Even when the world is crashing around you.

Hi, everyone! I hope you’re all doing your best to maintain your sanity these days. I told my doctor I’m having trouble sleeping, and she prescribed limiting my news consumption to 10 minutes a day. As if! The only way I could follow her admittedly excellent advice would be to chuck my phone into the ocean. Not gonna happen. But, like many of you, I’m trying to figure it out.

While I don’t know the exact right balance between knowledge and blissful ignorance, I do know there’s one precious thing in our lives that is an antidote to the fear and disbelief and anxiety and depression many of us are currently experiencing. And that is to keep expressing ourselves creatively, especially through our writing.

I bring this up because I worry that when the world is crashing around us, it can be easy to sink into a “why bother?” mindset. To question the relevance of a novel about best friends gone wrong or a memoir about family secrets revealed or a poem about the world’s natural beauty. How can writing projects without an activist bent be meaningful?

As a former columnist and op-ed contributor, I naturally believe in the power of politically oriented writing. And in a different issue of Page Fright, I’m announcing a FREE Zoom workshop on May 10, called “Writing to Make a Difference” - go here for more details and to register.

But I’d also argue that now, right now and for the next few years at least, is exactly when any form of creative writing is most needed. Keep writing what you started before darkness descended. Start writing the thing that has been tugging at you to be written for years. Don’t stop because you think it doesn’t matter. Believe me, it does.

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

Keep writing what you want for your own sake. In my book, What’s Your Creative Type?, I include studies, anecdotal stories, and quotable quotes by famous artists and writers pointing to the mental health benefits of creativity. They’re undeniable. One study even claimed it affected people at a cellular level! I was talking with a friend about it, and we both noticed that the days we write, we feel so much better—not just because we accomplished (and didn’t avoid) it, but because we feel immersed in something positive, clearer-headed, lighter, and even more physically fit. I know many of you have this experience, too.

Keep writing for your readers’ (and future readers’) sake. Now, more than ever, people need to lose themselves in compelling stories, unforgettable characters, laugh-out-loud humor, and gorgeous language. Escapism doesn’t have to be escapist, i.e., silly or mindless. It can be an absorption in something other than the horrors playing out in the news. Just as importantly, as the brilliant Barbara Kingsolver and others have pointed out, fiction (and I’d also say memoirs and personal essays) creates empathy in readers. As Kingsolver says, “It’s the antidote to bigotry.” If there’s one thing the world needs more, not less, of it is the capacity to care about others whose lives and experiences are foreign to your own.

Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash

Keep writing because the arts are under attack, and the best way to demonstrate that creative writing truly matters is to keep at it. Do it despite the NEA capitulating to anti-DEI demands, Meta stealing our copyrighted work for training AI, universities who don’t toe the line losing federal funding, book bans spreading through the states, etc., etc.

Photo by Jakayla Toney on Unsplash

I believe that all writing has purpose. All writing matters. And, right now, all writing is an act of rebellion. So, get out your laptop or grab your journal and pen, and rebel!

How do you usually feel, mentally and physically, after you’ve gotten some writing done (even if you’re not fully satisfied with it yet)? I’d love to hear about your experiences!