How do you keep writing when it feels like the world is burning? This post offers some advice on how to keep writing in uncertain times. Break through writer’s block and find motivation to write when times are tough. Your writing is important even in difficult times. This post will help you get back to work.
How to Keep Writing When It Feels Like the World Is Burning
I don’t know about you all, but I am tired of living in unprecedented times. It seems like the “unprecedented” hits just keep on coming: wildfires, pandemics, hurricanes, grid failures, winter storms, political strife, and even war.
You are a writer because you feel things, because you see what is happening around you and you’re moved by it. Maybe you are particularly affected by it even, because writing takes a kind of empathy and observation that not everyone has. But this is exactly why you need to do it. It is the most important time for you to make art.
You are a writer—writing is what you are here to do. It’s not selfish of you to keep writing in difficult, uncertain times. In fact, you need to do it.
It’s not easy. Even Toni Morrison wrote about feeling the crushing weight of everything happening in the world and not being able to write because of it. There’s something comforting to me in the idea that even a writer as seasoned and accomplished as Toni Morrison also felt the difficulty of sitting down at the desk in hard times. As important and influential as her work is, she too felt the resistance to creativity when times were tough.
But her advice to herself is important for us all to remember:
“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
Step 1: Remember Why Writing is Important
This is probably the most important step. If you take no other steps today (even writing!), take this one. Your writing is important. Remind yourself why it is important, why the world needs it. Even if all your writing does is make yourself feel better, that has made the world a better place. Peace begins within each of us. Find your peace.
There are many reasons to keep writing, even in the face of overwhelming global hardships. Here are just a few of them:
- Writers bear witness. If you write about what is happening in the world or your experience of current events, you help shape the way that future generations understand the events happening around you. Write what is happening, as you see it.
- Writers offer solace. Everyone is having feelings about political situations, global crises, and massive upheavals. Not everyone has the ability to put words to these emotions, but you do, my friend. When you put your thoughts onto the page, you are giving voice to others who may not be able to form their experiences into words. There are others out there who feel the same way you do; giving voice to your experience will also give voice to theirs. It is comforting when you find the words you need to express yourself. It makes people feel seen. Your writing can be a comfort.
- Writers offer relief. I know it is not easy to keep writing your fantasy novel when it feels like there is way more important stuff happening in the world. Climate change. Pandemic. War, even. It can be easy to succumb to the feeling that whatever writing you are working on is trivial unless it directly addresses whatever the current problems are. But people don’t just need to be informed or enlightened about what is happening in front of them. Sometimes they also need a break. Sometimes they need to allow themselves to get lost in art so that they can come back to the world refreshed and able to do something. You can offer that break. You can give them that relief.
Step 2: Take care of yourself.
We writers can be sensitive types. This is part of why we are good at writing. But in times like these, being sensitive is not easy. It’s not all creativity and dreaming and intuition. It is also empathy and compassion and suffering at the thought of others suffering. Sometimes it is also vicarious trauma. (Here is a helpful article about how to ease vicarious trauma if you are feeling that.)
If you are not feeling up to writing, you probably need to do something to take care of yourself.
I know there’s a lot of talk these days about self-care, but it really is important. You can’t get to work unless you take care of yourself first. So do what you need to do to get yourself right. Take a walk. Meditate. Take a bath. Bake a cake. Find solace in poetry. Do something to help if that makes you feel better. Whatever you need to do to get yourself in a mindset that is grounded and safe. Here is a huge list of ideas for different ways to take care of yourself. Pick one and help yourself feel better.
You need to take care of yourself so that you can do the necessary work.
Step 3: Change your plans.
I was going to create a post today about candles for creativity, but that seemed ridiculous right now given what’s happening in the world. I am a planner. Every quarter, I make detailed writing plans and I have goals, dammit! But working on that blog post didn’t feel right.
Then there was the part of me that wanted to just have some wine and watch MasterChef and try to tune it all out.
Instead, I am here writing through tears.
It’s not easy. It’s not easy to keep going. There’s suffering and frustration and heartache and sadness and anger and injustice and all of it might be rattling around in your chest, in your brain, in your gut. So maybe writing that meet cute you had planned is simply not going to happen today.
Maybe you need to change your plan. How can you move forward given the emotions you have? Maybe it’s just journaling. Maybe you just need to get your own feelings out so you can get back to your project. Maybe you can channel those feelings into another scene, or another project all together. Or maybe you need to write about what’s happening around you in the best way you can. Give yourself the grace to let go of whatever you had planned to be working on and allow yourself to respond to what you need. That is what the world needs.
Step 4: Channel your feelings.
This brings us to a related step. Change your plans so that you can channel your feelings. Find a way to make something beautiful out of what you are feeling. That is your superpower as a writer, to take conflict and uncomfortable feelings and to make them into something exquisite. There are several ways to do this.
- Journal. You might just journal to get your feelings out. This can actually be really helpful in getting yourself to a good place. Maybe it doesn’t feel important to journal, but most writers begin writing because it offers us some kind of relief. If you can get your fears and rage out on the page, they are no longer taking up space in your head. These prompts might help if you need a place to start.
- Write the situation. Maybe you can’t move forward on what you had planned to work on today, but that doesn’t mean you can’t create something. Let yourself write an unexpected poem. Document the chaos from your perspective. Write a letter to someone about what’s happening. Sometimes the most important writing is not planned, sometimes it’s what wells up from within when the unexpected knocks us down. Allow yourself to let those unexpected feelings well up. It could be the most important writing you ever do.
- Find the connections. Another way to channel your feelings but also move forward in your work is to find the connections between what you are feeling and the project you had planned to work on. Maybe this is the day you write that heart-wrenching scene. Maybe the wrench you throw your character is a pandemic, a forest fire, a war across the globe that somehow touches her life. Maybe you channel your anger into dialogue with the villain. Think of the butterfly effect. Everything is touched by even small actions across the globe. There are definitely connections between what you are working on and world events.
Find something that makes sense for you. How can you create something useful, something beautiful? How can you give a gift to the world formed from the chaos?
Step 5: Write.
And then, you have to get to work. Like Toni Morrison said, there’s no time for self-pity, no room for fear. There’s no more important time to be writing than now. By all means, remember your why and take care of yourself and channel your feelings and change your plans. But then, write.
Do not let yourself give in to the feeling that you are powerless or that there is nothing you can do. Do not let them fool you into thinking that creating art is not important.
As John F. Kennedy said, “Strength takes many forms, and the most obvious forms are not always the most significant… When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.”
Whatever you do, you need to sit down and write. That is how civilizations heal.
If you need help getting started, you might think about creating a writing ritual to lower the threshold for beginning. Or you might try a prompt to get the words flowing.
And if you still can’t write, go back to step one. Think again about why it matters and take care of yourself. Give yourself some grace. The words will come.
