21.37: Barrier Breaking: The World Is on Fire

Writing when the world is burning

0:00This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com slash writingexcuses. Season 21, episode 37.

0:19This is Writing Excuses. Barrier breaking. The world is on fire. Tools, not rules. For writers, by writers. I'm Mary Robinette. I'm Dawn Lawn. I'm Erin. And I'm Howard. So, this week's episode might be a little bit of a heavy one, but I think it's important. So, I want to dig in a little bit into a thing that I'm sure we have all experienced. Whenever you're listening to this, I think this is probably going to be relevant for context.

0:50We're recording this in 2026. However, this has unfortunately been fairly true for most of my adult life, which is there's a lot of chaos that happens in the world. There's the too often quoted proverb about may you live in interesting times, and boy, have the times been interesting. Without getting into specifics, there have been a lot of events that happen globally, locally, within our writing community. In many different ways, I think this applies, where there will be something happening that

1:22will be distressing to you and the people around you that can be very overwhelming to take in, whether that's you watching the news, looking at social media, listening to your friends talk about it. Things can feel incredibly urgent, very intense. And as we talk about this, I just want to underscore that none of this is about the fact that these issues aren't important. They are vitally important. They are existentially important. However, you are a person that lives in the world.

1:54You are a person that has your own goals and things that you are trying to accomplish. So what we want to talk about this week is how to navigate all this. How do you continue to work? How do you survive? How do you be a person when everything around you is on fire? Without turning into the dog that says everything is fine.

Setting boundaries and taking breaks

2:15So I think the thing I want to start with is how do you set boundaries around this? How do you frame this so that it is part of your life but doesn't overwhelm all of your experience to the point that you are no longer functioning? We've talked about the Swain method, scene sequel format in writing numerous times. I love it. The idea that you have to give the reader time to process things that have happened.

2:45Boy, the narrative of the world, if you've stuck your face into the river to watch the fish, at some point you're just going to drown. You've got to come up for air. You've got to come up for air. And as a writer who understands scene sequel, just that metaphor is a tool in my box to where I'm feeling overwhelmed and I realize, oh, wait, it's time for sequel.

3:16It's time for sequel. You know what? I'm just going to turn it off and I'm going to process. And weird how the writing tools sometimes work in the other direction. I think the point that it is okay to take a break is valid. But if you don't want to take a break, if you want to try to write, one of the things that I actually got from Sandra, one of our dear friends, is that everything takes some form of narrative energy.

3:48And that when you are looking at the things that are happening in the larger world, you are spending narrative energy processing that. And often you're processing something that you can't affect. But sometimes you are processing things that you can't affect. Sometimes it's not just the bigger world is on fire. Sometimes it's something that's happening in your personal life. Like writing was real hard in the last year of my mom's life. So, but I wanted to write.

4:21So, things that I would do is that I would recognize, I'm already spending this narrative energy. Can I put, can I take that narrative and put it into the fiction?

4:33This was often gifting my character with my emotions without necessarily gifting, taking the like, you know, increasingly fascist government and putting it into the story. But I could put in feelings of frustration. I could put in those kinds of things. And when you read Relentless Moon, which I wrote during a pandemic, actually not during pandemic.

5:03Doesn't matter. I wrote during situations.

5:08Pre-pandemic, it came out during pandemic. That was exciting. But there are pieces of it that you can see, or I can see, were my frustration at some of the political stuff that was happening at the time. And, but the politics aren't in there. My character's emotions are like, I'm gifting them with that. You know, we joke sometimes about filing the serial numbers off of a thing in order to put it in our thing.

5:38And this is a case where you haven't filed the serial numbers off of the pistol. What you've done is you set the pistol on butcher paper and traced the negative space around the pistol. And that negative, that's what's in your story. It's... Well, there's a quote from Andor that I want to quote here because it's something I think about a lot in the current state of the world, right? That I think is relevant here. I mean, the entire show is very relevant to the current political environment, which I think is a great example of how to

6:09take all of this energy and channel it into something. But there's a character, Karis Nemec, who says early on when we meet him, he's like a little political theorist. He says, So much going wrong, so much to say, and all of it happening so quickly. The pace of repression outstrips our ability to understand it. And that is the real trick of the imperial thought machine. This idea that there's so much happening all the time.

The business of online outrage

6:37One thing I do want to emphasize is this is an environment that is being manufactured for you by a number of competing influences in the world around you. If you are feeling outraged, confused, and overwhelmed, that is because there are incentives in the world that are making that happen for you. And that is how the technology companies that are in our lives benefit and profit from your engagement with their product. The way they do that is by showing you things that will engage your brain.

7:07And one of the easiest ways to do that is show you something that will completely outrage you, that will feel incredibly urgent. And then on a political scale and on a news scale, there's a lot of incentive to create catastrophes, to distract you or engage you in different ways. Whether that is to motivate a political base, see every email I get in my inbox from the Democratic Party saying, now is the only time, everything's too late. And it's like, okay, you're trying to get me into panic, so I'll donate. And this is not me saying to not take these issues seriously

7:40and not support causes you believe in, but also be critical of who is telling you what they're telling you and why. In the emotion you're feeling, it's helpful to recognize that a lot of the world we live in is trying to generate that in you. Yeah, and I think what's interesting is you cannot control, or I don't know, if you can, awesome. But in general, I cannot control the narrative of the world around me. What is happening? What is going wrong? I can only control my response to it. Yes. And so I think it's interesting.

8:10This actually comes from, weirdly, on a much more personal scale, one of my favorite advice columnists, Carolyn Hacks, always talks about if you have a bad relationship with a relative. Let's say every time you go home for Thanksgiving, ex-relative talks about your weight, and it's super harmful and super upsetting. She's like, at a certain point, you have to know that that's going to happen. And sadly, it'd be great if you could change that person. Sure, go for it. But often you have to just decide, what is the coping mechanism I'm going to activate

8:41when this upsetting thing occurs? Because if it surprises you every time, then you're living in like a shock and you can't really respond well. And so I think a lot about like, how do we create the environment of our own lives? An example from COVID is that at one point during COVID, I would wake up every morning and look at how many people had died. That was like the first thing I did when I woke up. And I was like, I want this information, but do I want this to be the first thing that enters my brain when I wake up in the morning?

9:12This is just, I have created a habit. And I think it's partly because it's like, okay, if I can understand this, maybe I can control it or feel a certain way about it. And I thought it was helping me. And then at a certain point, I was like, I don't think this habit is actually helping me. I think I'd be better off waking up and doing the crossword puzzle first and doing something that engages my mind differently. And then later in the day, maybe I will take time for this, figure out how I want to respond to it, but figuring out what is the way that works best for you? Because oftentimes your initial reactive impulses

9:43aren't necessarily the best ones. They're just the first ones. There's a real conflation in how we talk about things in terms of online activism, of looking at the thing is action, is what a lot of people argue. That if you have to be aware of exactly what's happening and look at it unflinchingly, and watch these videos of people dying or watch these awful situations, and that is in some way action in and of itself. And I could not disagree with that more, right? I think it's important to be aware of what's happening.

10:15But you inflicting trauma on yourself by looking directly at the thing to a point that you are unable to take actual action, to protest, to write about it, to whatever it is in your life, is not serving anyone, including yourself. And I think you need to make sure that you are in a healthy place first so that you can act in the world and live your life and find joy where you can even when things are hard. One of the things that you said earlier,

10:47just talking about the monetization of our attention, one of the ways this works, and I present it to you as a tool, one of the ways that this monetization works is that you're reading a thing on the web and it's, yeah, outrage, and you want a break. You want SQL, but you can't look away from scene. And as you keep scrolling, you get an ad.

11:18And that ad, well, you didn't have to look away, but you got SQL. You got to relax and kind of process. And now you're feeling friendly about that ad and you're going to spend money with them. That's heavily simplified, but I present it to you as a strategy. If you're reading things and you discover yourself relaxing and hitting the ads, find a way to do that without scrolling. Look left, off the screen, go touch grass,

11:49something, because you needing that is how you're being exploited by advertisers. I talk to a lot of my clients or a lot of writers in general who are struggling with deadlines, struggling to write, given the state of the world. And the advice I give them every time, and I stand by this as loudly and as firmly as I can, is log off. Stop looking at blue sky. Stop looking at Instagram or limit it to a certain amount of time.

12:19The reality is social media is nowhere near as useful for career building and marketing as it was 10 years ago. And a lot of people are operating still under this assumption because they haven't caught up yet. And it's all one of the few active things you can do as a writer to like try and build your brand and promote. I think there are times where it works. The vast majority of the time, it's not going to get you what you need. And if it's keeping you from writing books, which is the actual important part, then it is truly hurting your career, right? And so finding ways to log off

12:51and limit that, I think, so important.

Practicing boredom and logging off

12:54Speaking of logging off, I think this is a perfect time for us to take a break. So the advice about logging off is something that I have been doing for the last year or more. I'm almost never on blue sky these days. Most of my social media time is hanging out on Instagram on my cat's feed because then I just look at adorable kitties and puppies. But I want to use that

13:26as the other downside to everything is on fire is that when you start to use social media as a soporific in order to avoid thinking about things, that also prevents you from writing. So something that I want to encourage you is to practice being bored. Yes. That practice being, this is not meditation. This is just like, you know what? I'm not going to do that thing.

13:56And try to retrain yourself to reach for your writing. So one of the other things that I did this last year was that I got a new, it's not, it is technically a new notebook. I do like a notebook. But it's a little tablet-y thing because I realized that pre-social media, when I had quiet time, when I was standing in a grocery store line, when I was at the doctor's office, when I was whatever, I would pull out something and I would write.

14:27And that I'd stop doing that. I was scrolling instead. And that I was often scrolling for comfort and that that was as unhealthy as scrolling for outrage. So now I reach for this tablet most of the time and I try to jot things down. And often it's like one sentence, but that's still a sentence that I hadn't written. Yeah, I would say like, I agree with that. And then also I think it, the thing about being bored

14:58is I often, I will say sometimes I'll take spaces of boredom and use them to create a container for the things that I want to do. So if it's like, I'm like, I am washing the dishes. That is a set amount of time. While I'm washing the dishes, I will take time to like scroll or listen to this podcast or do this thing that like is something that I really want to limit the amount of time I'm spending doing this. So like while I'm in line, I will do it, but then I can't do it when I'm not here. Like I cannot continue the activity

15:29once the container has finished. I think the thing that's weird about having all this information on your phone is you can carry your phone from activity to activity to activity without a break. So sometimes I'm like, if there's a break in my day because like I was like, oh, I went to do lunch or I went to do whatever, that is a time to say, should I continue the activity that I'm doing or should I switch to something else? I may have mentioned this before, but a guy who was my boss 30 years ago,

15:59Eric Schmidt, I always respected the things that he had to say and he was recently asked, how do people, how do you be more productive? What's your productivity hack? And he said, make space for boredom, learn how to be bored again.

16:15And this is from a guy whose billions come from capitalizing on the fact that we don't like to be bored.

16:25Well, the thing I want to say is I think there's an analog to being, I think boredom is one of the most powerful things and I fully endorse everything y'all are saying. I do think there's a counterpoint to this as well, however, which is to be intentional, right? You can be bored, but then when you go to have your time where you're actively engaging with the world, I really, I'm begging you to be intentional about how you do that. Instead of passively consuming your news from scrolling through blue sky, take an hour, take two hours this week, sit down, this isn't your homework,

16:57maybe it should be, but like sit down, make a list of new sources that you actually trust, that are actually observing the world in interesting ways. Talk to your friends, find out who should I be reading right now to get my news and information. I have a small curated list of newsletters, independent news outlets, things like that, that I follow either in podcast or newsletter or, you know, social media accounts that I follow and that's where I get my information from. I'm not relying on the passive fire hose of outrage to inform me about what's going on.

17:28I'm actively seeking it out and then I say, okay, I've been doing X, Y, Z. I'm going to sit and listen to this podcast and find out what's happening in the world of tech this week. What's going on with AI? What's going on with this? Or what's going on with politics? What's going on with global conflicts? And containing it, also putting boundaries on it so I'm engaging with it when I want to engage with it and I'm doing that with intention and then I have the information I need to act. And then when I spend time on social media, I spend a lot of time on TikTok. I like to scroll, but what I've done there

17:59is very carefully curated in my feed to be things I'm actively interested in. I am learning information when I'm on TikTok. I'm learning exercise information, hiking information, woodworking information. I have my list of things and those are the ones I engage with and follow to make sure that my feed is actually giving me, I learn a ton when I'm on TikTok. It's active experience for me. I'm not just doom scrolling, right? I think you can be on social media in ways that are really intentional, that serve you and your interests and goals. And so I think cultivating boredom

18:30and then balancing that with active, intentional consumption of information, I think can really balance things for you in a helpful way. It's important to note that our thresholds are different, you know? Yes. None of us should, and I'm going to just use wild metaphor here, none of us should try to subsist on a diet of exclusively ice cream.

18:58But lactose intolerant people maybe don't get any ice cream. Yeah. It is entirely possible that the thing you've been getting too much of, you dial it back and you dial it back and you dial it back and it feels like too much until you dial it all the way off. Not everybody's like that, but there are some people who are and, hey, if that's you, acknowledge it and dial it all the way off so that you can have a life that's yours.

Channeling real life into fiction

19:29Mm-hmm. I'm going to once again say that one of the most powerful tools that I've also found is trying to use all of this in my fiction. And one of the things that I will do is I will shift it to the side. I'm like, how do my characters, like in this world, what does political outrage look like? Donald Moss talks about dichotomies and that there's multiple aspects of anything.

20:00And one of the questions he asks is, what are they right about? And what are they wrong about? So sitting there and going, what is my character wrong about? And what is my character right about? What are the bad guys wrong about? What are the bad guys right about? But also, how does my character, how does my character find comfort in this? How do they manage their outrage? All of those things are ways for me to often come up with strategies that will work for myself.

20:31Some of my best coping mechanisms have come because I needed my character to have a coping mechanism. And then I was like, oh, actually, that's really good. I should do that. I mean, fortunately, you're acting as a therapist for your character and you turned out to be pretty good at it. I like looking at these things also in like really big systemic levels. Like, what would I, how would I fix the world? How would I break it? Is like something that I like to think about when I'm doing my own world building. Like, is there an aspect, is there something going on in the world

21:01that I don't understand why people are drawn to it or what they like about it? If I create a world that has that, like, why would I, like, what would draw people towards it? What would draw people against it? Can I destroy the thing that I don't like? Can I often build the thing that I don't like just to understand it better so that when I'm confronted with it in real life, I feel like I understand the monster. Like, I've circled around this thing and so I have a better understanding of it when I am confronted with it. And I think that like, just to circle back a little bit, boredom can sometimes help with that. But I think the word boredom is,

21:33can be difficult for folks because it sounds bad. Like, it's like not a good thing. I often think of it as single track activities, activities in which you can only do one thing. So like a walk outside is like, could be, you know, maybe it's boring, maybe it's not. Outside's really fun. If you can go out and walk around, it can be really great. But you can't do that many other things because you have to pay attention to your physical space and you can't also, please do not read your phone while you're walking. That's how you fall down an empty open manhole.

22:04You know, so that does happen sometimes. You know, things like doing a jigsaw puzzle, it's very single track in that you have to actually just be putting all your energy into this. But I often find that I can use that time to sort of in the background, think about a story problem because it doesn't require my full thought. It's just lurking there in the background and in the middle of trying to figure out which is an edge piece and which is a centerpiece, I'll come up with that coping thing for the character or an interesting thing for the world. When I think about boredom, I think about it as allowing my brain

22:35to not be filled with stuff that I didn't choose. Let my mind wander, let myself get bored. And the moment that becomes, the moment I'm like, man, I'm bored, I want to do something with my brain, now I'm ready to go sit down and write. I like the way Schmidt said it, but I think it's better to say, allow yourself to get bored and then have the path out

23:06that can be productive. There's a thing we talk about in theater and in writing, which is leaving space for the reader to engage in the story. And I think that when we're talking about boredom, what we're talking about is leaving space for yourself to engage with your story. I want to return to a thing that you were talking about, Aaron, before we went back and talked about boredom, which was having this, your world building as interrogating what is wrong with the world or how to break the world in various ways. Austin Walker,

23:36who's a critic and a GM, talks about this as critical world building, which is using your world building to critique the environment around you. And I just want to have one thing, just end on this note of talking about what Mary Robinette was talking about, which is writing through this, right? Take all this and you can put it in your stories. Now, I think there's this idea that if you do that, your work becomes polemical or becomes a bummer, not fun to engage with. And I want to push back on that idea very, very firmly.

24:07I think Andor is a great example of this. That show can be an incredible bummer. There's moments in that show that I was like truly in tears. But also, that show is very thrilling. It's an adventure story. It's a heist. It's like all of these things. Whenever I'm starting a new campaign as a GM, I'm engaging with something explicitly political. I'm doing stories that engage with topics of war or AI or whatever it is that I'm finding difficult in this moment because I'm trying to find a way to process that.

24:38But those games aren't bummers. They're fun. They're adventure stories. People are engaging with it. This is the background texture. And also, it's really great to be able to tell a story where your heroes go out and resist the thing that's terrible and engage with it and have victories over that, right? Tell stories that show how you want the world to be, how you wish we were engaging with it, but also tell stories that reflect your experience. And I think that can be very important and very healing. And I think to do that work,

25:09you need space from the thing that's happening. And that's where we're saying take boredom, put boundaries on your social media content, engage with things in intentional ways so that there is room for you as sitting at the table with yourself, right? Make space for you to process and engage. And just the last thing, I know we said that was the last thing, be kind to yourself. It's a rough world. Like, maybe you do these things, maybe you don't. Maybe you scroll for 52 hours and you never leave, you know, you make toothpicks, keep your eyes up, whatever.

25:39Like, I think sometimes it's like just getting through the day is when the world is on fire, it's hard to get through a fire. It takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of strength. And I think that like, while we have a lot of advice for you, however you take it and however you are able to use it to get yourself through the world is valid and is awesome. And we're excited to see you continue to push through. I think leaving out a note of be kind to yourself is really wonderful

The social media diet homework

26:04and really important. However, I have some homework for you.

26:08And I think this homework will be kind in a broad sense but not the immediate. I think this is going to be very difficult for a lot of people. And my homework is to log off. Go touch grass. What I want you to do is take this week and put yourself on a strict social media diet. That can be zero. That's pretty tough. It could be an hour a day, whatever it is. Make sure you are really limiting. Go to your calendar. Be as concrete about this as possible. Say from five o'clock to six o'clock I will look at

26:39Blue Sky and Instagram and then I will not do it after that. I will put my phone down. Here's what's going to happen. You're going to feel itchy. You're going to feel a physical sensation of discomfort of not reaching for your phone, not opening whatever website you're looking at. I want you to sit in that discomfort and when you feel that, don't turn on a podcast, don't go watch a TV show, don't play a video game. I want you to sit there and force yourself to sit with it for at least 10 minutes and see what that feels like. Let that boredom develop within you

27:10and see what thoughts emerge as you do that. You can do this by taking a walk, go take a shower, go on a hike, go on a long drive, whatever it is. Whatever your way is of reconnecting with yourself and logging off, try and engage with that in a really intentional way. Do it over the next week and see how that feels and then make some choices about how you want to incorporate that in your life going forward. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now log off. Writing Excuses

27:43has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. For this episode, your hosts were Mary Robinette Kowal, Dong Wan Song, Aaron Roberts, and Howard Taylor. This episode was engineered by Marshall Carr Jr., mastered by Alex Jackson, and produced by Emma Reynolds. For more information, visit writingexcuses.com. For more information,