{"id":4877,"date":"2026-10-09T02:00:46","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T10:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=4877"},"modified":"2026-10-08T16:30:01","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T00:30:01","slug":"thoughts-on-writing-in-the-current-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2026\/10\/09\/thoughts-on-writing-in-the-current-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on Writing in the Current Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

While I was at my recent writers retreat, I was having some trouble settling into work on my current project, which is a sequel to my fantasy novel For the Good of the Realm<\/i><\/a>. I finally decided the best starting point was re-reading the parts of the book that I\u2019ve already written (about 40,000 words). Doing that made me recognize why I was having trouble and will probably continue to have trouble: I am obsessed by things going on in the present.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t just mean being an active participant in my society or my work at Unbreaking.org<\/a> or even doomscrolling. It\u2019s not just that I\u2019m paying attention and trying to do my political part at a fraught time.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s that there\u2019s so much stuff I want to think about and work out about what the future could and should look like, which is rooted in a lot of reading and writing I\u2019ve been doing. Regular readers have probably noticed that I have a lot of thoughts related to so-called AI, but I\u2019m also thinking a lot about climate change, wealth inequality, and how to change things so that we can live well on this planet.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not like the novel is alien to this, for all that it\u2019s a fantasy book in a non-technological reality, because there are things I\u2019m doing there that will be relevant to the present.<\/p>\n

But they\u2019re indirect, as much of my best fiction is.<\/p>\n

Part of the reason I don\u2019t know how to write good fiction dealing with the realities that interest me right now \u2013 economic, technical, political \u2013 is that I\u2019m still working out my take on it. I need to not only understand it; I need to internalize it. When I try to write directly about what I see around me, it often sounds polemical.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s better if I write essays about a lot of my ideas of the present, which will help me work them out so that they gradually emerge in my fiction.<\/p>\n

Right now writing about anything else feels hard. We\u2019re on such a precipice.<\/p>\n

But I don\u2019t want to stop writing this novel. I\u2019ve got a lot invested in it and if I can just fix the messy middle, I know it\u2019s going to be good.<\/p>\n

I assume this means I\u2019ll just have to keep on juggling and try to carve out more time \u2013 like the retreat \u2013 when I actually focus on the fiction.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting to see what the problem is \u2013 not the problem with the novel (still working on that), but the problem with the writer \u2013 and maybe makes it easier to fix.<\/p>\n

Maybe.<\/p>\n

Pretty sure people who use chatbots to \u201cwrite\u201d their stories don\u2019t have this problem. Of course, chatbots can\u2019t internalize anything. They don\u2019t have angst.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, I\u2019m well-stocked on angst.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While I was at my recent writers retreat, I was having some trouble settling into work on my current project, which is a sequel to my fantasy novel For the Good of the Realm. I finally decided the best starting point was re-reading the parts of the book that I\u2019ve already written (about 40,000 words). […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,18],"tags":[195],"class_list":["post-4877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-process","category-writing","tag-for-the-good-of-the-realm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4877"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4879,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4877\/revisions\/4879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}