I am, at least for the next six months, a full-time fiction writer. That isn’t a skill set that overlaps much of the rest of the world. Except when it does, and this week it does.
Professional novel-writing was an object lesson in the idea that if you want something done, you have to do things.
Eventually as a writer, you learn that nobody can write that damn book for you; that the reason your friends have book deals and you don’t is that you haven’t gone and done the work. And you go do the damn work, and sometimes it’s glorious and sometimes it’s the worst, and then the work is done and you can have, because of that, what you want.
This is also a good lesson for activism.
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I worry frequently about #TOpoli. I worry we have this idea that if we talk enough, or talk the right way, other people might go do things.
Sometimes we plan events, which are centred around people talking about something in the hopes that someone else will go and do things. And while education about how municipal democracy works is way too undercooked right now, and unarguably important, it’s also unarguable that we have a mayor who’s not going to resign no hell no way, a council that’s going to spend non-trivial amounts of time saving what’s already on the ship through the next year, and probably very little chance of movement until election kicks in.
What do we want to see happen? What does the city we want look like? Because right now, if we want it, we do it.
I am hurting to see those hands on shovels. I want to see those feet on the ground.
Where do politicans come from, after all? They’re people who stepped forward to do things.
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Citizenship is kind of a commitment, the same way being in a relationship is a commitment. It’s less about the trappings than the small moments of how you live.
Art is, to be perfectly fluffy about it, the business of making something from nothing. Making things, when you put your mind, your friends, and your muscle behind it, is not that hard a road to walk.
You can’t do it? Get a buddy. Do it together. Yes, you can.
Out you go.
(More on this tomorrow.)
The Way Forward Machine 