{"id":30646,"date":"2017-02-08T12:51:44","date_gmt":"2017-02-08T17:51:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=30646"},"modified":"2017-02-08T12:51:44","modified_gmt":"2017-02-08T17:51:44","slug":"kameron-hurley-how-to-keep-writing-through-times-of-great-political-upheaval","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2017\/02\/08\/kameron-hurley-how-to-keep-writing-through-times-of-great-political-upheaval\/","title":{"rendered":"Kameron Hurley: How to Keep Writing Through Times of Great Political Upheaval"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am never not in awe of Kameron Hurley’s writing. Whether we’re talking about her essays (ahem<\/strong><\/span><\/a>) or her fiction — like, say, her newest, The Stars Are Legion<\/strong><\/span><\/a> — I’m always eager to get my hands on the next Hurley book. Further, I’m always excited to have her here, because one day she’s going to be a literary rock motherfucking superstar, and I can say, I KNEW HER WHEN.<\/em><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

My grandmother grew up in Vichy France, under a regime propped up by and answerable to the Nazi regime. These last few months, I\u2019ve wished she was still alive more desperately than any time since her death. I wanted to ask her how you coped when terrible things were happening all around you.<\/p>\n

While we understand the necessity of writing<\/a> during these times, figuring out how to persist in one\u2019s writing when everything around you is so incredibly uncertain is tougher. Uncertainty breeds anxiety, and anxiety can kill your ability to do anything but go through the motions of bare bones survival. It\u2019s in realizing that it was the anxiety unleashed by the sudden uncertainty in this country \u2013 when will the government declare martial law? Will we become a Russian puppet-state? Did a city explode in nuclear fire overnight? – also helped me figure out how to address it. If we can\u2019t control the world around us, at least we can control the work we do in the face of it.<\/p>\n

So here are my coping strategies. Hopefully some of them will help you too:<\/p>\n

Ration your news.<\/strong> This may seem counter-productive. We all want to stay informed! The resistance needs us! But staring at a screen that\u2019s beaming nightmares into your eyes for hours on end isn\u2019t helpful; it\u2019s actively harmful, because it will convince you that the problems out there are too big to address. I subscribed to The Washington Post,<\/em> which I now read once a day. That\u2019s news enough. I use Tweetdeck to view Twitter, which allows me to mute keywords from both my feed and mentions. I\u2019ve muted, easily, over 200 keywords at this point, and I generally add a new one or two every day or so. This has also reduced the likelihood I\u2019ll get suckered into a fake news meme. I also don\u2019t have a personal Facebook account, which is a blessing. I recommend that you trim and mute there as well if you want to stay on it. But, again: Facebook is where fake news and your racist Uncle Joe are, so. I dunno. Your call.<\/p>\n

Take up a hobby you don\u2019t need to be good at.<\/strong> Like many writers, writing started out as my relaxing side gig. It was something I did in my spare time, and I found it deeply soothing. When I turned pro, the mad crash of deadlines and the need to level up my writing game to compete in a crowded market made the writing, well, less soothing. Sure, it\u2019s still fun sometimes. But it became work. I needed something else to do with my brain that didn\u2019t require angst. Then Netflix started streaming old episodes of The Joy of Painting<\/em> with Bob Ross, and I found them so relaxing to watch that my spouse got me an oil painting set for Christmas. I\u2019ve now painted something like 16 paintings, and it\u2019s OK that they aren\u2019t good! I don\u2019t owe them to anyone. No one is paying me for them. I can just enjoy getting better at a new skill. It\u2019s deeply satisfying to watch your skills level up from one painting to the next. Painting, like learning a new language, has also changed how I view the world. I\u2019m starting to look at the angles of things when I look at building and mountains. I pay attention to the play of dark and light. I\u2019ve also moved on to watching other painting shows. While watching a show by William Alexander on YouTube, he says, \u201cYou must add dark. You can\u2019t have light without the dark,\u201d and it was what I really needed to hear right then. Find something you enjoy that you don\u2019t have to be good at, and go do it.<\/p>\n

Chillax on the booze and other drugs<\/strong>. I spent a couple months post-election drinking way too much. Bad for my health and bad for my wallet. I cut myself back to once a week again, largely by replacing the booze behavior with the painting behavior. Watch your intake and reliance on drugs right now, legal or illegal, clearly. It\u2019s easy to make \u201cjust one more because the government has imploded\u201d into a habit, because the government is going to be imploding for a good long while. Caffeine isn\u2019t great for anxiety, either, so stick to those two cups of coffee a day, or go cold turkey (I\u2019m still working on this).<\/p>\n

Get a dog.<\/strong> I mean, I\u2019m a dog person. Dogs love you unconditionally. Pets make great therapy for folks suffering from depression, anxiety, PTSD<\/a>, or any combination thereof. So you could get any kind of animal: a cat, a chinchilla, a turtle. When you want to just lie around in bed and not get up, knowing that you have<\/em> to get up because you\u2019re responsible for the care of another living thing is pretty motivating. Dogs also remind you that there is love and loyalty and pure joy in the world, even if you have lost your faith in humanity. Dogs have the added bonus of making you get up to take them outside for walks, which will get you out of your chair and increase the amount of exercise you get. Recent studies<\/a> even found that people with dogs tend to get more exercise, and as a result, are healthier, than non-dog owners. It\u2019s science, people.<\/p>\n

Do what you can.<\/strong> Listen, yeah, resistance is great. Change the world! We need it. But we can\u2019t do everything, and this is going to be a long, long haul. Pace yourself. Figure out what you can do, and do that. I subscribed to 5calls.org\u2019s<\/a> newsletter, which sends you a list of five issues every week to call your representatives about. I make my calls and check the local Ohio Resistance (yes, really) calendar to see if there\u2019s a protest downtown that I can attend. So far I haven\u2019t made it to one of those, but it\u2019s on my radar now. Persist.<\/p>\n

Write your way out<\/strong>. The world has not fundamentally changed. Only our understanding of it. The sun still comes up. There is still the work to do. Certainly, I\u2019ve found that my own writing has shifted in tone and scope now that my view of the world is altered. I want to write more hopeful futures, futures where bad things happen, sure, but there are still good people out there doing good work. I want to be one of the people who makes a little more light in all this dark.<\/p>\n

Rage against the dying of the light.<\/strong> Listen. When I\u2019m feeling REALLY bad, and the dogs are curled up with me in bed and the booze is gone and I don\u2019t want to get up, I remind myself that this is what the bad guys WANT. They want me to hide in bed, to get weary, and most of all: to shut up and stop working. On the very worst days, it is pure, blinding spite that gets me out of bed, because fuck those guys. If the only way you can get out of bed and put ass in chair to work is to yell \u201cFUCK YOU!!\u201d repeatedly at the clouds every morning, do it. I often say aloud, \u201cGet up, Hurley\u201d in the same cadence one would say, \u201cGet up, Trinity.\u201d And it helps. It really, really does.<\/p>\n

So get up, folks. And get back to work.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Kameron Hurley is the author of the space opera, The Stars are Legion<\/a> and\u00a0the essay collection\u00a0The Geek Feminist Revolution<\/a>, as well as the award-winning\u00a0God\u2019s War<\/strong> Trilogy and The Worldbreaker Saga<\/strong>. Hurley has won the Hugo Award, Kitschy Award, and Sydney J. Bounds Award for Best Newcomer. She was also a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Nebula Award, and the Gemmell Morningstar Award. Her short fiction has appeared in\u00a0Popular Science Magazine<\/em>,\u00a0Lightspeed Magazine<\/em>, and many anthologies.<\/em>\u00a0Hurley has also written for\u00a0The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, Entertainment Weekly, The Village Voice, Bitch Magazine,<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Locus Magazine.\u00a0<\/em>She posts regularly at KameronHurley.com.<\/p>\n

Kameron Hurley: Website<\/span><\/a> | Twitter<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Stars Are Legion: Indiebound<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>|<\/strong> Amazon<\/strong><\/span><\/a> | B&N<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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I am never not in awe of Kameron Hurley’s writing. Whether we’re talking about her essays (ahem) or her fiction — like, say, her newest, The Stars Are Legion — I’m always eager to get my hands on the next Hurley book. Further, I’m always excited to have her here, because one day she’s going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-30646","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-7Yi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30646"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30651,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30646\/revisions\/30651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}