Nobody blames you if recently you’ve felt like getting the hell out of Dodge.
To be really clear about this, I’m not going to tell you whether you should love or hate the results of the US general election. That’s for you to decide.
But everyone is feeling the pressure.
If the vote went the way you hoped, you might find yourself as wide-eyed as the transition team at Trump Tower these days, parsing the flying news reports about this potential cabinet appointment or that suddenly unclear stance on one or another platform position.
If the vote went south for you, you may be wondering what the DC-wide shift is going to mean to your own interests and how you and your political soulmates will navigate the next four years that used to look a lot clearer than they do now.
From whichever side of the aisle you’re watching, you may be dismayed to find citizens in confrontations, sometimes violent ones—there’s video of Trump supporters being bashed and many minority members being accosted. This is wrong. All of it. No one should be hurt, period.
And it’s at times like these that you hear your readers talk about wanting to “escape into fiction.”
Being able to escape into fiction has been crucial for me over the last week.
— Eb (@erabrand) November 16, 2016
From a reader? This is good news. Even if good heads remind us that the best fiction leads us back to ourselves.
"In fiction, you escape only to run into yourself, again and again." – Katie Kitamura https://t.co/NOwg6Jbbza
— The Writer Magazine (@TheWriterMag) November 11, 2016
But when your writer-friends (or was that you?) start talking about escaping into your fiction? That’s when Killjoy Porter is going to swoop in for a big chat.
Here’s my provocation for you today: As lovely, dark, and deep as the woods of your writing may seem right now, Mr. or Ms. Frost, I want you to “keep your soul in the room,” as transcendentalists used to say, and your eyes wide open.
- For the good of your readers;
- For the good of your own head; and
- For the good of your society.