Times of Challenge, Times of Change
Plus a creative writing prompt to encourage much-needed dialogue
I honestly don’t know everyone who follows my Substack. But I would like to believe that we share similar values: a love of creativity and self-expression, a respect for history, and an intention to make a better self and a better world. I also know that it’s possible, perhaps even likely, that some of us define “better” quite differently. If not you, reading this now, then maybe your relative, neighbor, or friend.
We are a big, complicated country with vastly different lives, experiences, and views. Even the people in my own family see things differently, as do some beloved friends. Dialogue is how we find understanding. And dialogue has become sorely absent from our social discourse in the past years and decades. Yes, decades, if you think about it. I don’t remember wondering, when I was young, if someone was a Democrat or Republican when I first met them. I don’t recall being nervous to find out, dreading that the answer might color my opinion of them. While I have some theories about how we got here, I don’t have a suggestion about how to change the bifurcated paradigm in which we now exist. “Exist” but not live, not thrive, not unite and work together for a truly greater good. We are a body in pieces trying to move as one, and we clearly have reached a moment when that is no longer possible.
We are a body in pieces trying to move as one, and we clearly have reached a moment when that is no longer possible.
For the last two weeks, I have chosen to turn off the news. I have only started checking the headlines in the last few days. It’s not wise to play ostrich, but I needed to cleanse and recenter. To make room for my soul to wander and rest and hopefully return with renewed courage to face what’s ahead.
I have been fantasizing about the old days when families lived in small towns or isolated farms miles apart, back when news came only occasionally, as portrayed in the 2020 film with Tom Hanks, NEWS OF THE WORLD based on the novel by Paulette Jiles. Undoubtedly, the absence of information bred ignorance, just as the easy availability of false information does today, but it also invited a kind of peace.
As we doom-scroll through our news feeds or listen obsessively to whatever news source grips us, we invite anxiety over things we have little power to change. At least not any one of us individually. The anxiety poisons us. It fuels hatred and fear. Once upon a time, the 24-hour news cycle seemed an exciting new forum for information and awareness, but now it winds us up and grinds us down, keeping us panting and frantic instead of focused or functional. It’s voyeuristic and sensational. And it makes us all sick.
In order to create anything good—whether it’s a few paragraphs of decent writing or a better world—we have to tend to the soil that is ourselves.
Perhaps it’s time for each of us to shut off and turn inward in search of healing, whether it comes through writing or making other kinds of art, walking in the woods or hugging our children. I’m not giving up—not for a minute—on myself, my beliefs, my art, or our future. But in order to create anything good—whether it’s a few paragraphs of decent writing or a better world—we have to tend to the soil that is ourselves.
AKMARAL Events and Upcoming Writing Workshops
I’m headed to the Miami Book Fair this weekend for the last big in-person event of my AKMARAL book tour. If you are in the area, please join me, in conversation with Crissa Jean Chappell, on Saturday, November 23 at 10 AM.
Thank you to Carol Cram for a lovely conversation on the Art In Fiction Podcast. You can listen here, or watch it on YouTube:
I’ll be teaching my hugely successful and seriously intense four-week Book Marketing Boot Camp again this winter at The Writers Circle, plus two multi-genre workshops (one IRL and the other online). And if you have kids or teens and are local, I’m teaching all day Saturdays at The Baird in South Orange, NJ. Join me!
And on December 5, I’ll be giving back some of the love I’ve received through my book launch with an in-conversation celebrating MIRROR ME by the wonderful Lisa Williamson Rosenberg.
Creative Writing Prompt: Difficult Dialogue
My husband and I have been married for a very long time, but we hit a rather hard bump in our ninth year together. The details are unimportant, but the solution was not. We had to learn to communicate better—yes, how to talk, but more important, how to listen.
Our couples’ counselling sessions centered on a basic technique: repeating back each other’s words. It was tedious, annoying, angering. It required a ton of self-control. It took patience not to dive in with our own arguments, but to simply reflect back how the other person felt. Neither of us were good at it or trusted it at first. And even after we’d ironed out that particular rough spot, we would groan when a disagreement resulted in someone demanding, “Can you please repeat back what I just said?” But it worked. Over time, we learned to hear each other better and to comprehend, if not embrace, the other’s point of view.
In this very broken world, maybe we need to do the same thing for and with those we disagree with the most.
No, I’m not asking you to knock on the door of your politically opposed neighbor and conduct a civil, measured sharing of views. Let’s take this slowly.
Here’s the prompt: Write down on paper what you would say to a friend (real or imagined) who disagrees with you on a particularly charged topic. Make sure you’re trying to communicate to someone you care about. (If you despise or disrespect someone, even in your imagination, you will likely spew hatred instead of meaningful communication.) Then try writing their response from their point of view. Do this in dialogue so that you can put yourself in their mindset and let their words speak for themselves. Whatever your views, try your damnedest to represent theirs authentically. You don’t have to change your mind or theirs to do this exercise. But you do have to twist yourself into a complicated pretzel of compassion.
If you get uncomfortable or even disgusted, just tear up the paper. You’ve probably done a good job. The goal here isn’t writing for readers’ sake, but writing for the sake of the future. We cannot find a way forward if we cannot even talk to the “other.”
I’m going to try it to, swallowing the bile of my disgust, anger, and anxiety. I know I’m not going to like it, but I am curious to see if my theory of complicated compassion works at all.
You don’t have to change your mind or theirs to do this exercise. But you do have to twist yourself into a complicated pretzel of compassion.
Thank you, everyone, for your support. And to my paid subscribers, you are ANGELS!
AKMARAL: a nomad woman warrior of the ancient Central Asian steppes must make peace with making war
“A crackling novel”—Publishers Weekly
“A gripping saga”— #1 bestselling author Christina Baker Kline
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Your thoughts and feelings echo mine. I had bee so immersed in the news, unlike ever before, and then completely withdrew - withdrew from the news and from those I no longer respect. My emotions spiraled from shock to fear, to anger. I've just recently glimpsed at headlines, allowing myself a few minutes of news, then retreat again, compartmentalizing, doing anything "normal", including writing. Bedtime is most difficult as is waking,, until I get on with my day. I've imagined conversations with those I don't agree with don't understand, and I expect a different reason from each, no reason being acceptable to me. I still need time....