I love my job. I love writing, writing about and talking about books.
However, it’s sometimes hard to square what is essentially a job in entertainment with a world that isn’t entirely free to be at ease and entertained.
What does it mean, when you are a writer, that people are starving in Haiti, Egypt and the Philippines? That there’s a massive drought in Australia, and a food crisis in South Asia? People have always starved, it’s endemic to poverty — the poor we always have with us, after all — but things have been drifting quietly downstream for some time now, and in the distance is the roaring sound of the rapids.
…and yet I’m writing books. Is this the best use of my time?
Common sense suggests that paddling this canoe now won’t even slightly delay our rush toward white water, but that’s not why I’m still writing — I’m writing because I believe in the power of stories. I do. I think that’s a core belief — something I believe in as strongly as a religious creed. I believe in the power of story.
I remember feeling quite moved when so many SCBWI authors and authors-to-be sent books and flashlights to the kids caught in the Katrina floods, and knowing that if I was miserably hot and stuck with thousands of people in a sticky, crowded, dark room, facing The End of Life As I’d Known It with nothing but the grubby clothes on my back and a few damp possessions — maybe –, I’d want something else — quick — that said, “Once upon a time,” and ended somewhere else, maybe not with “Happily Ever After,” but with “Happily, Not Here.” I believe in the power of stories to distract and distance us from the unpleasant. I’m big on escapism — sometimes it is A Good Thing.
I also believe in the power of stories to teach. Just the other day, when we all rocked the readergirlz TBD, I was cheered to know that hundreds of hospitalized teens would now have a chance to be distracted — but more than that, to be taught. So many books have taught us. We know about cancer and diabetes, revolutions, wars and life as immigrants. We can’t really be afraid when we know things. Prejudices and terrors stem from what we don’t know. When we read, we learn. I believe in the power of learning things to shine a light on our fear.
Story was my lifeline when I was a kid.
Stories are my lifeline as… an older kid.
Yet, the food crisis thing. Starvation. Not just kids, but everyone in some countries. Somewhere the obnoxious idealist in me is shrieking, “Somebody should do something!!!”
I know who ‘somebody’ is – it’s me.
So, I’m writing.
And thinking of what else to do.