Creating While The World Burns

2025 HAS BEEN QUITE THE YEAR, HASN'T IT?

This year stormed in like the hurricane-force winds that sent fires raging across my beloved Los Angeles (thank you to everyone who checked in - we are safe but heartbroken for those who lost everything), threw in seemingly never-ending airplane crashes, unchecked bird flu, and a coup for fun.

Okay, 2025, the party is over. You've made a big mess. It's time for you to go home.

I've written this post multiple times, only to have each draft magically disappear into the ether before I could send it out (thanks to those of you who also let me know my website was off the rails). Each time, a part of me thought, what's the use?! Why am I even bothering to encourage and teach writing when the world is on fire and books are getting banned, anyway?

But then it occurred to me — that is exactly why.

When the world feels like it's falling apart, we need art more than ever.

In Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel’s stunning novel about the aftermath of a civilization-upending pandemic, the takeaway/point is just that: the art we create not only defines us as humans, but it is what brings civilization back—what brings us together—when everything else has crumbled away. This book is so powerful and resonates so strongly because the takeaway/point is so true. It gives us hope. It helps us to process and work through personal experiences that feel apocalyptic in our everyday lives.

Even if you think what you're writing isn’t important considering everything else going on right now, believe that there is someone out there who needs to read it. Believe that you must write it. Believe that your story is important.

Because it is.

Art makes us human. It’s how we document our human experience. It allows us to link with those who preceded us, those who are here with us now, and those who will follow long after we're gone. And that is why fascism is so intent on erasing it.

Write your story. Humanity needs it.