Hello, friends! Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Patricia Josephine, Diedre Knight, Olga Godim, J. Lenni Dorner, and Cathrina Constantine. If you’re a writer and if you feel insecure about your writing life, I hope you’ll consider joining this amazingly supportive group. Click here to learn more!
Last month, I ended up taking a mental health break from blogging and from writing in general. In an earlier draft of this blog post, I was going to explain all the problems I’m currently struggling with. But then I decided to cut that part out. I needed a mental health break, and I got a mental health break, and I don’t really need to say much more than that.
One thing I do want to talk about, though, is that I have been exposed to too much pessimism and cynicism of late, both online and I.R.L. The other day, I saw somebody online mocking a famous quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. It was the quote about how the arc of history “bends toward justice.” Why is that quote worth mocking? Because just look at the world today. It’s so full of injustice. The injustice is everywhere, and it gets worse and worse all the time, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it.
In my humble opinion, that sort of pessimism and cynicism is lazy. You believe that bad things will happen? You believe the bad things are going to get worse and worse? Well, just sit back, do nothing, and you’ll get to see how very right you are. Optimism, in my mind, is the belief that things can get better, if people make an effort. But you do have to try. Even if you can only do a little, you have to do what you can.
I’m not a fool. I know the world has big problems, and I won’t presume to tell you that I have solutions for those problems. War? Climate change? Systemic racism? Income inequality? I don’t know how to fix those things. I’m just a queer who likes outer space. But while I don’t know how to fix any of the world’s problems, I am confident that those problems can be fixed.
In the past, whenever I’ve tried to explain why I write (specifically, why I write science fiction), I’ve said some quasi-mystical stuff about looking up at the stars, contemplating the vastness of the cosmos, admiring the beauty and majesty of the planets. And that’s true. That is the #1 most important reason why I write. But this past month, I’ve come to realize there’s a secondary reason for my writing: hope.
Don’t give up on the future—not for yourself and not for humanity. Just keep trying, just keep learning, just keep growing, and tomorrow will be better than today. Writing science fiction is the best way I know to say that. So as I emerge from my mental health break and as I pick up the pen once more, I recommit to spreading those two messages in everything I write: space is awesome, and don’t give up on the future.
WANT TO LEARN MORE?
During my mental health break, I had to deal with a lot of pessimistic and cynical people. This blog post by Sci-Fi author and science communicator Matt Williams was a very welcome relief from all that, and I think some of my regular readers will enjoy it, too. It lays out a possible (I’d say highly plausible) vision for humanity’s future. It may not be a perfect future, but I do think it’s a future worth hoping for.