It occurred to me recently that all of my novels are about Brexit.
That wasn’t on purpose.
Most of the time it isn’t obvious or distracting - these are all fantasy and science fiction stories, after all, often set in entirely fictional worlds. But it’s there, in the themes and the characters.
It’s there in Kay’s desire for truth and unity over propaganda and division in A Day of Faces. It’s there in the self-destructive political scheming of The Mechanical Crown. It’s definitely there in No Adults Allowed’s teardown of the idea that grown-ups know what they’re doing. It’s present in Tales from the Triverse’s current plotline, with Britain holding a referendum on whether to ban all portal travel. OK, that last one might not be me at my most subtle.
Thing is, all speculative fiction is inherently political, whether the author intends it to be or not. If you write about the future, you’re immediately making massive decisions about human development. Showing the Earth 300 years from now requires projecting what will happen economically, socially, environmentally, even if none of those things are integral to the story. The fluffiest sci-fi story that has no overt political content is still making a statement of sorts simply by showing that there is a future.1
I’m quite happy to more directly embrace this kind of thing in my work. I don’t want it to ever be preachy, and it has to ring true for the characters, but relating the themes of my stories to real world events and concepts I believe strengthens the overall narrative. It makes them about something.
When I was writing The Mechanical Crown, a big part of that was showing the inexorable and often unintentional slide into fascism. That required researching how that sort of thing happens in real countries, and identifying the key signifiers of a fascist regime. It made for good injection of drama into the otherwise escapist adventure, but it was also me grappling with my own observations and fears about the world around me. This was in 2016.
Of course, readers don’t have to share my views. They don’t have to agree with anything that I put into my books. And I try to avoid portraying characters who hold opposing views to my own as ‘villains’. That would be cheap. The leader who takes the country down a dark path in The Mechanical Crown doesn’t do it on purpose: he doesn’t wake up and decide to be evil. He reacts to his situation and makes many bad choices, but always with the best of intentions. I hope there’s enough nuance and wiggle room in my stories for someone to disagree fundamentally with them and still enjoy the read. Much like me reading Attack on Titan this year and finding many of its themes and plotlines objectionable, while still finding it a thrilling and enjoyable ride.
I hope that readers get something substantial from the work, but my writing is in large part a way for me to investigate and interrogate my own assumptions, and fears, and hopes. It’s a kind of public therapy, a way for me to process difficult information and reform it into something my brain can handle.
The online writing community on Substack has been tearing itself apart this month due to the unpleasant prevalence of ultra right wing publications using the service. As tends to be the case, the debate rapidly became binary: the tribal choices were limited to a) welcoming all the Nazis or b) complete censorship authoritarian slippery slope 1984. I didn’t sign any of the various public letters doing the rounds, as I prefer to explore the topic through my fiction and my own words. That’s just how my brain works. I also think fiction has the potential to help people consider alternative points of view, in a way that a straight essay or letter might struggle to do. An essay is likely to be immediately polarising, whereas fiction can be superficially about something else entirely, and then raise the issues through its characters. Fiction is rooted in empathy, after all. Both approaches have their uses.2
Under pressure
All of this also connects to behaviour that I’ve observed in myself. I go a bit strange if I don’t write regularly and frequently. I suspect I’m not alone in this: if I don’t get words down onto a page, and ideally in the form of fiction, my brain starts to feel clogged, as if it’s heavier than usual. I become irritable and short-tempered.
The very process of writing is like releasing a pressure valve; it’s an an exhaust vent for my thoughts. Those thoughts can live safely on the page, rather than bouncing around inside my brain where they’re likely to smash something or become combustible.
Writing is what does this for me. Presumably other people get it from making music in a band, or playing sport, or painting, or building things, or writing a private diary. Or actually talking to a therapist. Maybe some people don’t need an outlet and are able to process all their random thoughts more efficiently in the first place: maybe others have fewer random thoughts to start with? I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing - I’m pretty sure for me, my overly energetic brain is what enables me to be an author.
Going back to my projects: No Adults Allowed was also about me dealing with my anxieties about being a parent, and about my son growing older (he was 7 when I started writing it). He was moving from being an infant to a young child, with all of the associated ups and downs. It’s not an accident that one of the main characters in the book is 6 years old.
Triverse is the most complex project I’ve worked on, and will likely be the longest as well in terms of both word count and serialised run. Many of its story ideas and themes are pulling from real world events, often in semi-real time. While the overarching plot was worked out in advance, a lot of the sub-plots and more episodic storylines have come about due to a headline grabbing my attention, or after a conversation with a friend.
Rubber ducks
There’s a phrase called rubber duck debugging that I only learned recently, even though I suspect I’ve been doing it most of my life. It’s when you vocalise thoughts to someone in a way that is supposed to be a discussion, but ends up being rather one-sided. Often the other person in the conversation doesn’t even get to respond before you’ve already figured out a solution during the act of describing the problem. By vocalising the issue to someone else, you examine it from a different perspective and see answers that were previously hidden. Hence the apparent tendency in programming circles to have an actual rubber duck on your desk that you can talk to, rather than ‘wasting’ the time of a colleague.
Writing my fiction, and writing this newsletter, is a grand exercise in rubber ducking. It’s me saying things out loud and trying to make sense of them in my head.
You are my rubber ducks.
Thanks for listening.
Also, thanks for reading, as always.
Around and about, I’ve been reading some good stuff this last week. This was an interesting take on a recent author behaving (very) badly incident:
I thought Courtney did a good job there using this particular example to then explore why creative people can behave abysmally more generally, without ever condoning it.
I’m reminded of the bizarre way game developer Bethesda have been directly replying to critical comments on their latest game. Something many authors have been guilty of in the past, including big names. Never try to convince someone who is critical of your work that they’re wrong. It’s not going to go well.
I got a lovely shout-out in
’s 2023 round-up post:What I really noticed in Michael’s post was how important the writing community has been, and he really neatly summarises the breadth of people he’s connected with. I remember years ago reading an interview with a highly successful British horror writer (who will go unnamed) who was ranting about how writers don’t need community, or to connect with other writers, and that the idea of communication between writers was absurd. Writers should be independent and isolated. It made me sad - and I’m so pleased that there’s such a vibrant and growing community of diverse writers here.
Carrying on with that theme of community,
wrote about the benefits and the drawbacks of being surrounded by so many interesting people and having so much to read. The main issue being that there is not enough time in the day.Other than the importance and difficulty of managing our time, she does note how writing is, by default, a potentially lonely endeavour. That’s where online communities can especially help, and it reminds me of my work in the indie filmmaker scene in the early 2000s. Back then I was working at a tech start-up helping young filmmakers, and I really noticed how the internet (still relatively primitive) was helping weird kids in small towns, where they were the only person interested in filmmaking, connect with other weird kids in other small towns. And then collectively realising they maybe weren’t so weird, and were in fact just very creative. The writing community in the newsletter scene in 2023 felt like that, to me.
Right! Because it’s Christmas. I’ve chopped an extra 20% off annual subscriptions up until the end of the year. If you enjoy the newsletter it’s a lovely way to offer direct support. The vast majority of stuff on the newsletter will always be free (fiction especially), so this is very much an optional thing and don’t feel obliged.
Talking of free stuff, here are some ebook giveaways I’m taking part in, if you’re looking to stock up on holiday reads from other indie authors:
Urban Fantasy Freebies (there are a lot of muscley male torsos on these front covers. I reckon anyone downloading the Triverse sampler will be seriously disappointed)
Right. See you on Wednesday if you’re taking part in Let’s Watch Babylon 5, or I’ll catch you on Friday for more Triverse.
Complaints from people along the lines of “keep politics out of [insert thing they like that’s always been political]” always confuse me.
For the record: 1. The correct number of Nazis in any given situation is zero. 2. Substack platforming right wing extremists (or any extremists) via its official newsletters and podcasts is gross. 3. Appeasing Nazis as part of some noble defence of free speech is self-defeating: the first thing they will do given the chance is to remove everyone’s free speech. The inevitable impact of Nazis on free speech is lower quality speech and less speech. 4. Slippery slopes are not nearly as slippery as a lot of free speech absolutists claim: it’s actually pretty simple to ban Nazis without banning anything else (see: many functioning societies).
Fine writing, indeed.
I immediately clicked with the concept of rubber ducking; I think I've done it myself in writing and politics as well; I just don't think I knew that was what it was called. I actually have a rubber duck from an old job; I should use that more often. :)