One of my major assignments for my 4th-year English course that I just finished was to keep a weekly journal. The idea was that each week we’d be covering a new topic, and the journal would give the professor a chance to read our thoughts, let her know where we were mentally and emotionally as we went along.
Apparently my journals were very good. She mentioned, and I’m going to quote her here: “If sci-fi doesn’t work out for you, you might consider publishing some of your musings, maybe?” Which is amusing for me for a few reasons, but the main one probably being that I don’t understand the point of autobiographies at the best of times or for the most interesting of people, and I’m definitely neither the best nor most interesting of people. My views, such as they are, are pretty pedestrian.
And anger-and-sadness fueled. A lot of anger and sadness these days. Everything is getting harder, and colder, and worse. Well, almost everything. The trajectory of history is still curving towards justice, but gosh is it ever a battle sometimes.
A quick aside: I remember reading once that my favourite author of all time, Terry Pratchett, wrote the way he did because he was incredibly angry. Anger is what fueled his work, and gods did it ever fuel brilliant work. It was funny, but it was funny because it was angry. At the time I read that I thought “Huh, that’s too bad… I’m not really all that angry so I’ll probably never write anything as good as him.”
Which, for the record, I’m okay with. He is the greatest English writer of the last hundred years. Not being as good as him still leaves lots of room for very, very good writing.
But these days… I still don’t think I’ll ever write anything as good as Pratchett, but I think I may have the anger at least. Lots of it to spare.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!