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mistressofmuses) wrote2025-02-07 08:57 pm
mistressofmuses) wrote2025-02-07 08:57 pm
Never Say You Can't Survive: Chapters 12 - 17
Now we're into part three of Never Say You Can't Survive.
Chapter 12 starts this section off discussing anger.
There are several different aspects of anger that this chapter talks about: channeling your own anger into motivation, putting it into the story you're telling, using it to connect to other powerful emotions, finding out what makes a character angry...
The author touches on this, but anger is a thing I have a hard time with. Being angry about things was definitely not an encouraged emotion at any time in my life, ha. At least not expressing that anger. It's been pretty well drilled into me from childhood that no matter how angry I am, I should always be calm and collected, because anything that appears angry will be immediately discounted as irrational. I'm not good at dealing with anger, mine or anyone else's, frankly.
But I am... really fucking angry. Often. Especially now. At *gestures toward everything.*
It's a good point made in the chapter about how channeling your anger into your writing doesn't necessarily mean writing about what makes you angry directly, or even focusing on a fictional scenario that inspires similar feelings. Anger can push you to write any sort of tone or scene. An example she gives is anger making you want to protect the things you care about, so you can use your own anger to fuel a scene that's actually just about the love and caring you want to make room for, no hint of the anger on-page.
(This feels applicable to my own experiences with writing. I haven't always deliberately channeled anger into my work, but I can see ways in which focusing on the positives I want for the story - characters finding people who love and understand them, triumphing over whatever evil they're facing - it comes from a place of anger at feeling like those things are being denied.)
There's another bit about finding anger inspirational: writing about characters standing up to injustice being an inspiring thing, reminding the writer and/or reader of how people can make a difference and fight back against the evils of the world.
Struggling more with this bit, again. I don't know how to get through my general cynicism to feel that as "inspirational" instead of "deeply demoralizing because it doesn't work that way in real life."
Chapter 13 is about the importance of the relationships between your characters.
The author mentioned that it sort of unlocked things for her when she realized that she writes about relationships as a central aspect of her stories, rather than characters in isolation.
Big "me too!" reading that, haha.
It really is often some aspect of a relationship - for my stories, it's usually romantic, though hopefully with more layers to it as well - that creates that one scene that makes me want to tell the story as a whole. It's about the vibe, when something finally clicks between them that feels worthwhile. (It doesn't *have* to be romantic, of course, but I usually have at least a romantic b-plot.)
That's what tends to stick out the most for me in works that I most enjoy as well. I love good worldbuilding and fun plots... but it's often something about the way the characters themselves interact that really sticks things in my brain.
There are perfectly excellent exceptions out there, but in general that's the thing that grabs me.
Chapter 14 is titled "One Easy Way to Feel Better About the World," and it is about making your characters want something.
The thesis here is that allowing your characters to want things (whether those are good, achievable things, or impossible terrible ideas) can remind you that it's okay for you to want things in your life, too.
She's definitely right about how hard it can be to want things when everything is terrible. (She calls everything being awful "trash fondue," and that feels pretty accurate right now.) It feels small and petty and selfish to want things when things are in general so bad, when they may only get worse, when other people are in so much danger and suffering as well...
She's also right about how an awful lot of people (anyone marginalized in any way, in particular) are often already told that their wants and desires don't really matter, or that they should be quiet about them.
I agree that making characters desperately want something is one of the best ways to make them interesting and make a reader invested. (And is a good reminder for me as I try to NOT sand my characters down into nothing. Make them want, and make that guide their actions, rather than stumbling blandly from plot point to plot point.)
So this falls into... I'll try. Again with my cynicism and struggle with the world as it is right now... but I'll try! And maybe it will make me feel better, too.
Chapter 15 is about revising, and turning shallow emotion into deeper real emotions.
Couldn't agree more with this one! This is one of the things I find the most frustrating (though it at least seems to be a common complaint!) I'll have a super rich, detailed scene planned out in my head. Sometimes I've gone over this scene dozens of times in my head, as a daydream, when I'm falling asleep, when I'm actively trying to plan out story beats. It's super emotional and cool and well articulated, and every little detail has been accounted for... and then it's on the page and... oh no, what is this flat, terrible stick figure scene??
(One of my favorite relatable writer memes is about this. An image of Starry Night captioned "the scene in your head" and then a silly, blocky MS-Paint redraw of Starry Night captioned "the scene when you write it.")
So this chapter is about revising as a method of getting from that too-flat version to the richer, more viscerally emotional scene you've been envisioning.
She suggests three things to address this: The set up, drilling down into the specific details of the scene, and making sure that the character's specific buttons are being pushed. Set up is kind of like when talking about endings, where you go back and make sure that everything leading up to this point is setting it up properly. Details of the scene is looking into the small things that your character takes notice of or thinks about, which may or may not be directly related to the big Thing that's happening, but can hopefully make the scene itself feel richer and more grounded, as well as being realistic to how people tend to experience Big Emotions. Pushing character buttons is again about making sure the characters themselves have a nice strong foundation as to who they are, and why this thing impacts them so specifically and in what ways. It came with the helpful reminder to not be afraid of pushing your character's buttons.
All of this is good stuff, and is absolutely part of what I think I should be mindful of when going through the rewriting process. Especially the "don't be afraid to push your character's buttons." This is again, another symptom of the "sanding characters down to shapeless blobs" problem... but I am often afraid - or at least really reluctant - to needle at my characters, especially when it comes down to interpersonal interactions, and doubly when it's between a romantic pairing. Still fighting against the bad faith crit that I took far too much to heart, trying to ensure that relationships I wanted to be positive and supportive don't have any "toxic" conflict... which in the eyes of that bad-faith no-nuance crit is any conflict.
So. Good chapter, good things to keep track of!
Chapter 16 closes out part three with "Twelve Ways to Keep the Fun of Writing Alive"
Definitely a topic worth thinking about. I've struggled a lot on and off with continuing to enjoy writing. While I've always come back to it, I have often gone through patches where I got super burned out and just... couldn't find any reason that it seemed like a good idea to keep going.
1 - Rewards. Talks about rewarding yourself for successful writing sessions, but also on redefining what those sessions might look like. Sometimes it's better to focus on how a session felt rather than how many words you got. (Now, I do mostly track my wordcounts, but I try to give myself ways to track other necessary work, too. While I don't think I'll change wordcount being the primary measurement, I have encountered the downsides as well, when it comes to pushing overmuch for quantity even at the expense of quality on some sessions.)
2 - Make up stories. Have fun with low-stakes opportunities to make up stories just for fun. This... would probably be a good idea to try, though I'm also a bit scared to try, haha. I mentioned before how I feel like I don't have a wellspring of ideas to draw on, so it feels wrong to "waste" creative energy on ideas I don't intend to do anything with, but maybe it'd be a good thing to attempt.
3 - Cheat on your current project (jump between multiple different things to not get bogged down.) Noooo, my one weakness. This is the one thing that I feel categorically incapable of doing. I have tried to work on multiple things at once and it tends to just overwhelm me/burn me out/destroy my enthusiasm or inspiration for both projects, and make me not want to work on any of it. At the same time, this is what I'm trying to find a way to do! I want to try and bounce between projects... but in practice, it's always made me unhappy. I'm working on it!
4 - Community! Nooooo, my other weakness because there's actually more than one. I am a part of several online writing communities, and I should really try to start actually participating in them. And I do post completed fanfic to AO3 and such, and treasure when people like or comment on it... but it's up to them to decide if they want to read it or not. The idea of sharing excerpts with a group (not all of whom are necessarily interested in my thing specifically, and didn't choose to read it), especially a real-life group, gives me hives. I think I'd rather just not write.
5 - Find a routine. Yes! This has been helpful... er, mostly. I haven't really been able to carve out the time as something super special or distinct (in a shared one-room apartment it's hard to carve out much space.) But I have tried to at least sort of get a routine together, where the time between finishing other stuff (sim game, dinner, DW, etc.) and taking the dogs out for their final trip of the night, is time that is just devoted to writing. It's mostly worked! Unfortunately, if any of the other stuff gets derailed or takes longer (if I'm making a longer DW post, I have a lot to catch up on with friends, there's something else I need to do at home, we had to run an errand, etc.) then the writing is usually what ends up getting steamrolled. I may need to still find new ways to prioritize.
6 - Make time to read. Can confirm, this has helped, or at least I think so. I have spent multiple years struggling to find time to read, and I've often not even tried to carve out more time, because it would specifically cut into my writing time. Trying to make more time for reading this year (granted, only a month so far) has led to MORE writing, not less. (Again, data for a single month only, but promising so far.)
7 - Reread something of your own that you like. I haven't done this for a morale boost, though I have gone back to reread things, because hey, I wrote them because they were a story I wanted to have exist. I like reading stories! So I have done this, though I don't know if I have any short little bits that I'm especially proud of.
8 - Change how you write (typing vs. hand writing vs. dictation etc.) I ostensibly have a notebook that I carry with me specifically to make sure that I can always write if the fancy takes me. It helps at work, because writing in a notebook doesn't seem as sus as long unbroken strings of typing, ha. And it means while waiting for an appointment or in the car, I'm free to jot down notes that occur to me. In practice... I don't do a lot of actual writing in it. I do a lot of planning, and a lot of daily "what I intend to do" things, but little actual writing. I should try to do more, but I'm very afraid of it being spied on at some point. And since I only want to work on one thing at a time, I don't like having two different continuities of scenes to deal with. But I should try to push through, because it was helpful in the past.
9 - Leave things that are broken, and just move on: you really will figure out how to sort it out later. Eeeeh... I remain unconvinced. It sounds solid, I want to believe it! Sometimes I have left "uh, somehow they get to point B with xyz" and that is fine. But this comes paired with the "eat your dessert first"/"write the bits you're most excited for first" advice. This advice has very strongly NOT worked for me. If I write all the cool bits that I'm excited for, I have approximately zero motivation to try and do the connecting bits that do not excite me. And when those cool bits are all I have written, but they also feel flatter than I want them to (per the earlier discussion about revising as a chance to layer in the important emotions), then it seems like even the cool bits aren't good, and the idea as a whole should go in the trash.
10 - Write random bits, even if they don't have a place yet/ever. She talks about having a separate "dump file" where snippets of dialogue or random scenes go. This is something I have very often done, and it is definitely worthwhile! This is also as close as I let myself get to writing the cool bits first - if there's some really strong image or line of dialogue that I love for it, I put it here to wait its turn.
11 - Keep brainstorming. She mentions not taking your work too seriously, and remembering that all of it can be considered temporary and changeable. (Not that the work isn't serious, but that you don't have to treat your outline as if it were carved in stone, or be overly precious about what you've written or planned.) A good thing to keep in mind, especially if a cool new idea comes to you but contradicts the original plan in some way. It's worth letting yourself explore.
12 - It's okay to feel crappy about your writing. This does feel contradictory to the "keep it fun" advice, which she acknowledges, but I like her point. Treat it like a point of curiosity and try to troubleshoot the problem. Is it general burnout? Is it dissatisfaction with the project? Is it something in your non-writing life getting in the way? Etc. I think back to last year when I had months-long block that wouldn't let me write much of anything... and ultimately really did figure out that I was mostly feeling guilty for having fallen behind on my part in editing a friend's project. The longer it took, the worse I felt, and the more anxious I was about acknowledging it at all... but it felt deeply wrong to try and focus on my own stuff when I was holding her up. Once I bit the bullet on that one and got caught up with her stuff, and profusely apologized for how long I'd let it take, I was able to start thinking about my things again.
And now we're into Part Four!
Chapter 17 is about how writing is inherently political.
I feel like I'm not sure what to say about this chapter... I just sort of feel like "yup! Correct!" Though I think I was in a poor mindset when I read this chapter, and felt uncharitably cranky toward it.
I absolutely agree that yes, writing is political, because there are always assumptions and biases in place from you as the author, how the issues within the work interact with the current world (and I like the point about how the same story may feel very different depending on what is going on in the world at the time), what you're expecting based on genre and intended audience, etc.
It does talk about the risks of clumsy metaphor, which is a good reminder, and how it's often a good idea to complicate the tropes and metaphors you decide to utilize. Simplistic "this is an obvious stand-in for real world group x" tends to feel shallow and insulting when it's poorly thought out and lacks depth. Making it more complicated can make it more about the actual situations and characters you're writing about (with similarities to real life situations) instead, which can actually make it matter more.
I understand and agree with the idea that everything is inherently going to be political, and I even agree about how important it is to see reflected in the things we write and read... And she talks again about the inspiration to be found in seeing the struggles and triumphs of very real-seeming characters dealing with their own situations. I know that this is true, and is one of the things I genuinely love about fiction! It's part of why I read, if not always why I write (though sometimes that, too.)
Right now that just still feels... exhausting. Trying to reflect the important politics of the disaster world we're in right now just feels... pointless. I don't think that it is pointless, it just feels pointless.
(I'm trying to think about like... the fact it's important to me to see fiction that treats queer characters and relationships well, even if politically it feels terrifying right now in the real world to be queer and to care about so many queer loved ones who are also terrified. It's important to me to see, it's something I actively seek in what I read, and it's important to me to include in any of the writing I do... but when it comes to doing the writing, it also feels like a pointless thing that can never be enough to matter.)
Frustratingly, I think I might just be too pessimistic right now for the hopeful messages to reach me, even though I'm trying.
Chapter 12 starts this section off discussing anger.
On anger:
There are several different aspects of anger that this chapter talks about: channeling your own anger into motivation, putting it into the story you're telling, using it to connect to other powerful emotions, finding out what makes a character angry...
The author touches on this, but anger is a thing I have a hard time with. Being angry about things was definitely not an encouraged emotion at any time in my life, ha. At least not expressing that anger. It's been pretty well drilled into me from childhood that no matter how angry I am, I should always be calm and collected, because anything that appears angry will be immediately discounted as irrational. I'm not good at dealing with anger, mine or anyone else's, frankly.
But I am... really fucking angry. Often. Especially now. At *gestures toward everything.*
It's a good point made in the chapter about how channeling your anger into your writing doesn't necessarily mean writing about what makes you angry directly, or even focusing on a fictional scenario that inspires similar feelings. Anger can push you to write any sort of tone or scene. An example she gives is anger making you want to protect the things you care about, so you can use your own anger to fuel a scene that's actually just about the love and caring you want to make room for, no hint of the anger on-page.
(This feels applicable to my own experiences with writing. I haven't always deliberately channeled anger into my work, but I can see ways in which focusing on the positives I want for the story - characters finding people who love and understand them, triumphing over whatever evil they're facing - it comes from a place of anger at feeling like those things are being denied.)
There's another bit about finding anger inspirational: writing about characters standing up to injustice being an inspiring thing, reminding the writer and/or reader of how people can make a difference and fight back against the evils of the world.
Struggling more with this bit, again. I don't know how to get through my general cynicism to feel that as "inspirational" instead of "deeply demoralizing because it doesn't work that way in real life."
Chapter 13 is about the importance of the relationships between your characters.
On relationships:
The author mentioned that it sort of unlocked things for her when she realized that she writes about relationships as a central aspect of her stories, rather than characters in isolation.
Big "me too!" reading that, haha.
It really is often some aspect of a relationship - for my stories, it's usually romantic, though hopefully with more layers to it as well - that creates that one scene that makes me want to tell the story as a whole. It's about the vibe, when something finally clicks between them that feels worthwhile. (It doesn't *have* to be romantic, of course, but I usually have at least a romantic b-plot.)
That's what tends to stick out the most for me in works that I most enjoy as well. I love good worldbuilding and fun plots... but it's often something about the way the characters themselves interact that really sticks things in my brain.
There are perfectly excellent exceptions out there, but in general that's the thing that grabs me.
Chapter 14 is titled "One Easy Way to Feel Better About the World," and it is about making your characters want something.
On wanting:
The thesis here is that allowing your characters to want things (whether those are good, achievable things, or impossible terrible ideas) can remind you that it's okay for you to want things in your life, too.
She's definitely right about how hard it can be to want things when everything is terrible. (She calls everything being awful "trash fondue," and that feels pretty accurate right now.) It feels small and petty and selfish to want things when things are in general so bad, when they may only get worse, when other people are in so much danger and suffering as well...
She's also right about how an awful lot of people (anyone marginalized in any way, in particular) are often already told that their wants and desires don't really matter, or that they should be quiet about them.
I agree that making characters desperately want something is one of the best ways to make them interesting and make a reader invested. (And is a good reminder for me as I try to NOT sand my characters down into nothing. Make them want, and make that guide their actions, rather than stumbling blandly from plot point to plot point.)
So this falls into... I'll try. Again with my cynicism and struggle with the world as it is right now... but I'll try! And maybe it will make me feel better, too.
Chapter 15 is about revising, and turning shallow emotion into deeper real emotions.
On emotion:
Couldn't agree more with this one! This is one of the things I find the most frustrating (though it at least seems to be a common complaint!) I'll have a super rich, detailed scene planned out in my head. Sometimes I've gone over this scene dozens of times in my head, as a daydream, when I'm falling asleep, when I'm actively trying to plan out story beats. It's super emotional and cool and well articulated, and every little detail has been accounted for... and then it's on the page and... oh no, what is this flat, terrible stick figure scene??
(One of my favorite relatable writer memes is about this. An image of Starry Night captioned "the scene in your head" and then a silly, blocky MS-Paint redraw of Starry Night captioned "the scene when you write it.")
So this chapter is about revising as a method of getting from that too-flat version to the richer, more viscerally emotional scene you've been envisioning.
She suggests three things to address this: The set up, drilling down into the specific details of the scene, and making sure that the character's specific buttons are being pushed. Set up is kind of like when talking about endings, where you go back and make sure that everything leading up to this point is setting it up properly. Details of the scene is looking into the small things that your character takes notice of or thinks about, which may or may not be directly related to the big Thing that's happening, but can hopefully make the scene itself feel richer and more grounded, as well as being realistic to how people tend to experience Big Emotions. Pushing character buttons is again about making sure the characters themselves have a nice strong foundation as to who they are, and why this thing impacts them so specifically and in what ways. It came with the helpful reminder to not be afraid of pushing your character's buttons.
All of this is good stuff, and is absolutely part of what I think I should be mindful of when going through the rewriting process. Especially the "don't be afraid to push your character's buttons." This is again, another symptom of the "sanding characters down to shapeless blobs" problem... but I am often afraid - or at least really reluctant - to needle at my characters, especially when it comes down to interpersonal interactions, and doubly when it's between a romantic pairing. Still fighting against the bad faith crit that I took far too much to heart, trying to ensure that relationships I wanted to be positive and supportive don't have any "toxic" conflict... which in the eyes of that bad-faith no-nuance crit is any conflict.
So. Good chapter, good things to keep track of!
Chapter 16 closes out part three with "Twelve Ways to Keep the Fun of Writing Alive"
On the 12 things:
Definitely a topic worth thinking about. I've struggled a lot on and off with continuing to enjoy writing. While I've always come back to it, I have often gone through patches where I got super burned out and just... couldn't find any reason that it seemed like a good idea to keep going.
1 - Rewards. Talks about rewarding yourself for successful writing sessions, but also on redefining what those sessions might look like. Sometimes it's better to focus on how a session felt rather than how many words you got. (Now, I do mostly track my wordcounts, but I try to give myself ways to track other necessary work, too. While I don't think I'll change wordcount being the primary measurement, I have encountered the downsides as well, when it comes to pushing overmuch for quantity even at the expense of quality on some sessions.)
2 - Make up stories. Have fun with low-stakes opportunities to make up stories just for fun. This... would probably be a good idea to try, though I'm also a bit scared to try, haha. I mentioned before how I feel like I don't have a wellspring of ideas to draw on, so it feels wrong to "waste" creative energy on ideas I don't intend to do anything with, but maybe it'd be a good thing to attempt.
3 - Cheat on your current project (jump between multiple different things to not get bogged down.) Noooo, my one weakness. This is the one thing that I feel categorically incapable of doing. I have tried to work on multiple things at once and it tends to just overwhelm me/burn me out/destroy my enthusiasm or inspiration for both projects, and make me not want to work on any of it. At the same time, this is what I'm trying to find a way to do! I want to try and bounce between projects... but in practice, it's always made me unhappy. I'm working on it!
4 - Community! Nooooo, my other weakness because there's actually more than one. I am a part of several online writing communities, and I should really try to start actually participating in them. And I do post completed fanfic to AO3 and such, and treasure when people like or comment on it... but it's up to them to decide if they want to read it or not. The idea of sharing excerpts with a group (not all of whom are necessarily interested in my thing specifically, and didn't choose to read it), especially a real-life group, gives me hives. I think I'd rather just not write.
5 - Find a routine. Yes! This has been helpful... er, mostly. I haven't really been able to carve out the time as something super special or distinct (in a shared one-room apartment it's hard to carve out much space.) But I have tried to at least sort of get a routine together, where the time between finishing other stuff (sim game, dinner, DW, etc.) and taking the dogs out for their final trip of the night, is time that is just devoted to writing. It's mostly worked! Unfortunately, if any of the other stuff gets derailed or takes longer (if I'm making a longer DW post, I have a lot to catch up on with friends, there's something else I need to do at home, we had to run an errand, etc.) then the writing is usually what ends up getting steamrolled. I may need to still find new ways to prioritize.
6 - Make time to read. Can confirm, this has helped, or at least I think so. I have spent multiple years struggling to find time to read, and I've often not even tried to carve out more time, because it would specifically cut into my writing time. Trying to make more time for reading this year (granted, only a month so far) has led to MORE writing, not less. (Again, data for a single month only, but promising so far.)
7 - Reread something of your own that you like. I haven't done this for a morale boost, though I have gone back to reread things, because hey, I wrote them because they were a story I wanted to have exist. I like reading stories! So I have done this, though I don't know if I have any short little bits that I'm especially proud of.
8 - Change how you write (typing vs. hand writing vs. dictation etc.) I ostensibly have a notebook that I carry with me specifically to make sure that I can always write if the fancy takes me. It helps at work, because writing in a notebook doesn't seem as sus as long unbroken strings of typing, ha. And it means while waiting for an appointment or in the car, I'm free to jot down notes that occur to me. In practice... I don't do a lot of actual writing in it. I do a lot of planning, and a lot of daily "what I intend to do" things, but little actual writing. I should try to do more, but I'm very afraid of it being spied on at some point. And since I only want to work on one thing at a time, I don't like having two different continuities of scenes to deal with. But I should try to push through, because it was helpful in the past.
9 - Leave things that are broken, and just move on: you really will figure out how to sort it out later. Eeeeh... I remain unconvinced. It sounds solid, I want to believe it! Sometimes I have left "uh, somehow they get to point B with xyz" and that is fine. But this comes paired with the "eat your dessert first"/"write the bits you're most excited for first" advice. This advice has very strongly NOT worked for me. If I write all the cool bits that I'm excited for, I have approximately zero motivation to try and do the connecting bits that do not excite me. And when those cool bits are all I have written, but they also feel flatter than I want them to (per the earlier discussion about revising as a chance to layer in the important emotions), then it seems like even the cool bits aren't good, and the idea as a whole should go in the trash.
10 - Write random bits, even if they don't have a place yet/ever. She talks about having a separate "dump file" where snippets of dialogue or random scenes go. This is something I have very often done, and it is definitely worthwhile! This is also as close as I let myself get to writing the cool bits first - if there's some really strong image or line of dialogue that I love for it, I put it here to wait its turn.
11 - Keep brainstorming. She mentions not taking your work too seriously, and remembering that all of it can be considered temporary and changeable. (Not that the work isn't serious, but that you don't have to treat your outline as if it were carved in stone, or be overly precious about what you've written or planned.) A good thing to keep in mind, especially if a cool new idea comes to you but contradicts the original plan in some way. It's worth letting yourself explore.
12 - It's okay to feel crappy about your writing. This does feel contradictory to the "keep it fun" advice, which she acknowledges, but I like her point. Treat it like a point of curiosity and try to troubleshoot the problem. Is it general burnout? Is it dissatisfaction with the project? Is it something in your non-writing life getting in the way? Etc. I think back to last year when I had months-long block that wouldn't let me write much of anything... and ultimately really did figure out that I was mostly feeling guilty for having fallen behind on my part in editing a friend's project. The longer it took, the worse I felt, and the more anxious I was about acknowledging it at all... but it felt deeply wrong to try and focus on my own stuff when I was holding her up. Once I bit the bullet on that one and got caught up with her stuff, and profusely apologized for how long I'd let it take, I was able to start thinking about my things again.
And now we're into Part Four!
Chapter 17 is about how writing is inherently political.
On writing politics:
I feel like I'm not sure what to say about this chapter... I just sort of feel like "yup! Correct!" Though I think I was in a poor mindset when I read this chapter, and felt uncharitably cranky toward it.
I absolutely agree that yes, writing is political, because there are always assumptions and biases in place from you as the author, how the issues within the work interact with the current world (and I like the point about how the same story may feel very different depending on what is going on in the world at the time), what you're expecting based on genre and intended audience, etc.
It does talk about the risks of clumsy metaphor, which is a good reminder, and how it's often a good idea to complicate the tropes and metaphors you decide to utilize. Simplistic "this is an obvious stand-in for real world group x" tends to feel shallow and insulting when it's poorly thought out and lacks depth. Making it more complicated can make it more about the actual situations and characters you're writing about (with similarities to real life situations) instead, which can actually make it matter more.
I understand and agree with the idea that everything is inherently going to be political, and I even agree about how important it is to see reflected in the things we write and read... And she talks again about the inspiration to be found in seeing the struggles and triumphs of very real-seeming characters dealing with their own situations. I know that this is true, and is one of the things I genuinely love about fiction! It's part of why I read, if not always why I write (though sometimes that, too.)
Right now that just still feels... exhausting. Trying to reflect the important politics of the disaster world we're in right now just feels... pointless. I don't think that it is pointless, it just feels pointless.
(I'm trying to think about like... the fact it's important to me to see fiction that treats queer characters and relationships well, even if politically it feels terrifying right now in the real world to be queer and to care about so many queer loved ones who are also terrified. It's important to me to see, it's something I actively seek in what I read, and it's important to me to include in any of the writing I do... but when it comes to doing the writing, it also feels like a pointless thing that can never be enough to matter.)
Frustratingly, I think I might just be too pessimistic right now for the hopeful messages to reach me, even though I'm trying.