How To Write Words And Make Art In This Dire Era of Clowns and Cowards

If you’re not a person who agrees that we are living through some spectacularly stupid and nasty shit, then I suppose this post isn’t for you. You think things are some variant of normal, and I celebrate you for that. I wish I could live in the soft, sweet spam-blanket of blissful unawareness! A place where all things are and have been as they should be. A place where the words it’s fine, don’t worry about it echo around you, and you believe it, and everything is melting rainbow sherbet and ultraprocessed optimism.

I am… not there with you.

I think things are bad. I think they are dire. I am scared and worried for a lot of people and for the very country in which I live. While I don’t know that the times are precisely unprecedented, I think they are a truly absurd version of past events, reskinned and freshly costumed. (It’s like being killed by a bear. Lots of people have been killed by a bear, and so that’s not at all unprecedented. But in this case, the bear is wearing a thong and he beats you to death with a dead, wet owl. The problem and outcome are the same — bear attack, death — but somehow, it all feels so, so much stupider.)

So, I’m feeling, y’know, pretty cynical. And I know that there’s this increasing counter-call of “don’t give into cynicism!” but also, I’m definitely gonna give into cynicism, at least for the moment. I think cynicism is actually a pretty natural response! We are at the whim of a lot of complicated problems invoked into reality by a cabal of shitty villains and I think a lot of the things we hoped to see getting better have not yet gotten better. Sadness and anger and distrust are not an unusual way to feel given everything, and I think we should feel free to resist anyone who tells us to not give into cynicism, to just smile more, to fist-pump in the air like we’re at the end of the Breakfast Club. Shit’s fucked up, and it’s okay be like, “hey, shit’s fucked up, and I don’t know how we get this shit unfucked, er, up.”

And that doesn’t mean being hopeless, or spewing doom everywhere, or thinking we cannot improve things. We can. It just sucks, and it’s going to be hard. Cynicism does not also mean absolute despondency (though to be clear, I’m also not going to blame you for being despondent, either, c’mon). I just think it means a level of rough-edged, hard-worn weariness. It’s not giving in or giving up, it’s just, well, a long sigh and a dark little spot inside yourself that recognizes certain grotesque realities.

It’s not just the Current Political Situation, either. It’s AI, it’s billionaires running everything, it’s the uncertainty of everything, the chaos all around.

Anyway. This post isn’t supposed to be about all that but here I am, on a grim little tangent. The post is supposed to be, hey, once more I got people asking me, hey, how the fuck am I supposed to write stories and make art given all this bullshit, and like, whoo, woof, I– I mean, I’ve written this post like, how many times over the last eight years? Between the first time that fucking guy got elected and the pandemic, it’s definitely been a recurring theme in our creative lives, right? I’ve written about it a bunch of times and in addition, I wrote a whole goddamn book about it. (Crude, ill-conceived sales pitch: it’s called Gentle Writing Advice. Order it from my local bookstore, if you like.)

Point is, I hear you, and I feel it myself. How do we persist in the midst of this nonsense? There’s a distinct swimming upstream feeling, except it’s not just a stream, it’s run-off from a sewage processing plant. It feels difficult to make art, to tell stories, to not be distracted by all the awfulness, to feel like it matters at all, and normally I’d come at this with a kind of… high-minded approach, some advice that’s about, well, okay, art is resistance, storytelling can change the world, and the world needs you and your art and —

And that’s all true but I’m just not there. That’s not my headspace.

Maybe it’s not your headspace, either.

Because, to be clear, I need the answer, too. I need the advice. I just had to finish my next middle grade (and I did it, just last week, go me, time to eat a cookie). And I’ve got more books in the pipeline.

So, what’s my advice to me?

Here’s where I’ve landed, and maybe this helps you, maybe it doesn’t.

Fuck it.

And fuck ’em.

That’s it. That’s what I’ve got.

(Well, that and the twin practices of disassociation and compartmentalization.)

Fuck it, because I’m not going to let all this stupid clownshoes bullshit stop me from writing. And fuck ’em, because I know for sure the clowns don’t want me to keep making stuff. AI? Fuck it. Billionaires? Fuck ’em. Things have been bad before, will be bad again, and art keeps getting made, so I’m gonna be one of the ones to make it. And I hope you will too. Join me, if you will, in this grim, clench-jawed, teeth-biting-on-teeth determination. An era of brute forcing the words to happen. Blood from a stone by smashing it against the temple of whoever tries to stop you. Salt on your tongue and sand in the eyes of your enemies. That’s the attitude that I need right now. That’s what’s going to get the stories told. Maybe you need it too.

So join me —

Scream it loud.

Fuck it.

Fuck ’em.

Let’s write.

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Sorry for the promo, but you buying books is how I don’t die!