In the wake of the US election results and the campaign that led up to it, I’ve been wondering a lot about whether writing is worth it. Especially my writing and the writing I edit, but really writing in general. Toxic stories have been told and retold over and over. Even people who should know better often don’t recognize them as toxic, or won’t say so out loud. The toxic stories have big money and power behind them. The other ones don’t. So I’m looking for reasons to keep putting one word after another, to make my writing the best it can be and help others to do likewise. Here’s a start.
If, like me, as you watched Brexit and the US election, disbelief became disappointment bordering on despair, then you may be feeling disempowered right now.
The wrong side won. Bad things are going to happen and there’s nothing you can do about it except protect yourself and those you love and wait for sanity to return.
I believe that that response has been engineered. It is the story that those who won, want those of us who oppose them to believe.
The first step to stopping them is to recognise that this is a story and not the truth.
The second step is to change the story.
Salman Rushdie said:
“Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives—the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change—truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.”
I want…
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Write Through It 