The Grasshopper #81: Winter is Here
All weather is writing weather, and living life weather
Right now it is snowing outside, gray and windy. November first, right on time. But during my morning walk I went from a full-on snow squall to warm sun in five minutes. The trees are just past peak, a chorus of ochres, and leaves are falling as fast as the snow.
It will be bare branches by the weekend when you read this. We also change the clocks, rolling them back and messing with Mother Nature.
Moody weather, which got me thinking about the importance of mood and inspiration when you write regularly. While I am certainly affected by both, I don’t wait around for mood to lift or inspiration to strike. In my experience, both of these things happen from writing, from just doing it.
They aren’t conditions for writing, they are the result of it.
I think this is more important than it might seem on the surface. To be honest, waiting around for inspiration is amateur stuff. Therapists will tell you that the catch 22 of depression is that the best treatment is action, just when taking action is the hardest thing.
Creating is work and comes from work, from doing. You may find yourself sort of noodling around, putting words on the page and then, at some point, a pattern starts to emerge, maybe not one you planned, but that’s the good part.
You’re looking for an angle or what songwriters call a hook- something unique and catchy. Those are fishing metaphors by the way, hooking and catching, and they are essential to any writing and especially online writing, where attention spans are often limited.
We all know writing when it doesn’t grab you. Sometimes when browsing books, I’ll open a page and see if something interests me. If it doesn’t, I’m likely to set the book down.
And leave some writer’s hard work sitting there unread, based on skimming a few sentences. It’s not fair at all, but it is reality.
This is why titles and opening lines are so critical and so hard to get right. Just like those elusive hooks songwriters live for. With writers it is the equivalent of that earworm line in a song you can’t get out of your head.
In The Witness Chronicles this week I published a story about the massive hurricane that out of the blue and did a number on Acapulco, Mexico. My title, The Climate Bombs Have Arrived. Are You Ready?, is provocative and timely and seems to have worked.
It also has a kind of punchy rhythm I was looking for.
It’s a kind of a gift when you get something like that and it leads you right into the story. The good news is that you can get better at coming up with these things over time. They do make a difference.
Every once in a while I read something that makes me want to know more and this week the New Yorker has a piece by Adam Gopnik (may or may not be behind a paywall) that is ostensibly about a biography of Stephen Crane, legendary author of The Red Badge of Courage.
But Gopnik’s piece is, of course, about Crane himself as a writer and a human being who lived his own life rather than that expected by society. I realized in reading it that I had not read Crane’s masterpiece or have forgotten it, and the article made me want to read it.
Crane was 24, a journalist, when he wrote the book and somehow conjured up amazing civil war battle scenes that he never experienced, in prose that was terse and modern. He became famous, but liked the company of fallen women and his reputation suffered for actions we might see as noble these days.
He was an early practitioner of Gonzo Journalism, a la Hunter Thompson.
Gopnik also may have convinced me to read the autobiography, which runs 800 pages, maybe a winter read. Or not. But Gopnik’s writing is fine as always.
Lately I’ve seen my opinion writing getting more aggressive and maybe a little paranoid. The world, both here and abroad, seems poised for calamity and chaos. And I’ve started thinking about the potential in a dark near future for even nobody opinion writers like me to be nervous.
It came out in a piece I’ve been sitting on, but since it is relevant to life as a writer and free expression of ideas, I’m sharing it here:
Will My Words Come Back to Haunt Me?
2024 could be a matter of life and death if Trump wins
It’s an abstract idea to think that expressing my opinion, a right we take for granted, could get me thrown in jail, ruined, or worse, because of politics.
I write about politics, current events, and climate change. They are my opinions and observations- I am not a journalist. I prefer the term ‘witness’. But as I watch US politics going into an election year unlike any other, I wonder if I should be afraid.
Somehow, the Trump juggernaut keeps chugging along, shrugging off scandals and crimes that would have ruined any American politician only a few years ago. Not just shrugging them off, attracting millions who think his dangerous ideas are admirable. Who seem to worship him more the more he breaks the law, acts inhuman and demented, and lies incessantly.
How did we get here? More importantly, how do we get past this monstrosity? The answer is relatively simple. We elect someone else, someone sane, to run the country. But he has made that answer not enough.
If he loses he will claim fraud and conspiracy. We know this. And his followers in government, particularly the Republican-led House of Representatives, will refuse to govern unless he is given power. They are refusing right now, led by an incredibly well-programmed zombie, Mike Johnson, who sincerely believes in his own mandate from heaven.
He is not alone. Our government, businesses, religious leaders, and workers have been infected with the Trump virus. It uses chaos and hate to thrive. No one is immune, not even his own loyal followers. Especially his own loyal followers. They are often the first he turns on.
How can we trust a man who trusts no one? Who believes he, and he alone, is outside of the law? And how did this beast come to exist?
It is a tale of money, fraud, and an ego so large it can allow no other personality to live anywhere near it. Anyone who dares stand up is annihilated, along with their family and anyone around them.
This fear is so powerful that other powerful men and women either cower before him or revel in the freedom he gives them to create chaos. Until they err and are taken down by their leader.
If this sounds insane, it is because it is. Donald Trump has no magical powers to destroy the lives of others at a whim. His fortune is not great by today’s standards, it is a sham. He is a weak man, a pitiful man.
So, why do his followers fear him so much? This fear has frozen our government. Out of 217 Republicans in the House, not one could stand up and vote against Mike Johnson, a robot programmed by fear and hatred and an unbending sense of entitlement, totally unearned.
Not one out of 217 elected Americans could stand up and question a choice that we are already watching destroy a branch of the American government. A man with no vision, no imagination, no flexibility, and no respect for democracy or the rule of law.
These people, and they are your friends, neighbors, and family, are willing to tear down hundreds of years of progress, slow, hard, progress towards a truly democratic state, for a man and men like that? For Trump and his Mike Johnsons, your future overlords, thought police, priests of the new Inquisition?
Is this hysterical? Demented? Am I alone in seeing this horror descend? Or more likely, ascend from some depths we never knew existed in America? Or always knew but ignored like the poor relatives in our past?
Potential voters are reported by the polls to be giving up. Blacks, Gen Z, Latinos. This can’t happen, this matters, this could mean a country unlike any we could imagine, a dictatorship where some little writer like me gets hauled off to jail or worse for writing a rant like this on an inconsequential website?
I have never thought about this until recently. I write about what I write about because I care about our country and our future, all of our future. All of the bullshit being thrown around is a smokescreen designed to keep us from facing things like climate change, that will affect generations to come.
I try not to be overly paranoid, as hard as that is in this divided and often corrupt political environment. But when it comes to a hugely obvious challenge like climate change it is hard not see forces at work keeping us from confronting this reality.
Forces driven by profit motive and power, the power to do as they wish, regardless of its affect on future generations. These are the people and the money behind these moves towards an authoritarian state, a state where they can thrive and issues like climate become verboten, forbidden.
Every day it feels like more things become forbidden to speak of for fear of angering or upsetting someone, of rocking the boat when it seriously needs to be rocked to wake people up.
Will this rant do anything to improve things? Every day we put up with authoritarianism it becomes less likely. And more likely that some person with an opinion disappears, is silenced, and never spoken of again.
It has happened throughout human history. But there is no reason it should happen here, where we broke the mold and started a country whose core beliefs are equality under the law and freedom of expression for all.
For all.
Yes, I had to go there. It’s not paranoia when we see censorship out in the open and intimidation used to ensure it takes place. Any writer could find themselves subject to censorship and worse if the political environment changes.
I’m going to keep writing. At this point I’m clearly on the record with my beliefs and ideas. But I’m very small potatoes. That’s my best protection.
I’ve written two unpublished novels. They gave me great satisfaction and were intense learning experiences. But these days I have had to set aside that writing to write about other things. Simply too much on my plate right now.
But things are going well. As my audience slowly grows, I am seeing more vitriol in comments, along with a lot of fear and paranoia. I think it is a sign of the times, but I hope I’m still flying under the radar. We’ll see.
Did you write today?
Martin
1922 words
~ I write The Grasshopper, a letter for creatives, The Witness Chronicles, a weekly digest of three of my articles on politics and climate, and The Remarkable, a recovery letter, about my addiction and reentry experience. All are weekly and free with a paid option to share support. Please check them out.
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Believe me, it makes my day. M
Martin, I share your view of our seemingly hopeless situation, in which not a single Republican member of the House of Representatives has the courage to stand up to this moron. Thank you for your courage.
I am dismayed, Martin. I spent two hours carefully writing a response to this essay, which moved me. I wrote as a comment and did not save or copy before hitting post. Turned out I then had to sigh in and my comment seems to have vanished. Bolinsky