It's been a tumultuous week in the world. This past weekend was Canadian Thanksgiving, but many of us have been struggling with the appalling news out of the Middle East. On top of the wars in Sudan, Armenia, and the earthquake in Afghanistan. Before that the flood in Libya and the earthquake in Morocco. Thousands of people have been killed and millions more injured, homeless, and suffering.
It's difficult to feel like celebrating and being thankful when so much of the world lives in pain and fear. Difficult too to put my mind toward editing my latest novel. As I sit in my cosy house in my safe, peaceful neighbourhood, with my full fridge and my warm bed, typing away on my modern MacBook and checking my facts on my fast, reliable wifi, it feels so trivial and so privileged. I acknowledge that I have much to be grateful for, but I do so with a twinge of guilt.
The weekend's horrors put me in a very dark place, and as my novel contains a lot of darkness (it's a mystery, after all), I have channelled my mood into the feelings of the characters and the atmosphere of the story. But I will have to reread it all once I have regained my sense of balance. Whether they are cosies or nail-biting thrillers, mysteries endure because they are about finding justice and righting wrongs. In difficult times, they provide a sense of satisfaction that some semblance of justice has been restored to the world, at least in the book.
My stories are often dark and emotionally hard-hitting, and I want readers to be touched and moved by the struggles I explore. I believe in the power of compassion and empathy. But I don't want them to slit their throats at the end; instead. I want to give readers a sense of hope, even if it's only a faint flicker.
I don't feel that sense of hope in the world right now. As Donis said, we need some great leaders capable of rising above their self-interest and their love of power long enough to lead us out of this morass. On climate change, on regional wars, and on universal human rights. We may have to start small, but we have to start somewhere.
Meanwhile, I will continue to try to infuse a little hope, compassion, and justice into the fiction I create. Throwing up my hands is not an option.
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