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SAVING THE WORLD
by
H. E. SMITH
The world grows darker every day. You can't read a newspaper without
seeing some piece about further acts of violence spreading through this
already unjust world. Murder. Rape. Hate crimes. And spoken
violence--your gay neighbor spat at and called a faggot, your best
friend sexually harassed by her co-workers, the pagan Kiwanis member
preached at and threatend with hellfire-and-brimstone by his so-called
brothers. Governments spreading intolerance by supporting unfair laws
and clamping down on their citizens' rights.
We're writers. We have the power to change the world.
Sometimes it all seems overwhelming. Sometimes it seems like there's no
hope, that the dark looms over us and the only thing to do is back down
and surrender. That's a lie. Surrender's just the easy way out.
When you're alone and afraid, smothered by the world's unrelenting
night, there is another option. Write. Channel your anger, your fury,
your rage at the injustices, the hatred, the wrongness of the world
into your themes. Strong themes combined with other strong elements
make novels memorable.
Fiction influences people. Many people rethought their views on
homosexuality after reading Mercedes Lackey's Last Herald-Mage trilogy.
Piers Anthony continuously receives letters from teenage girls who
decided not to kill themselves after they read his books. Holly Lisle
included hotline numbers for victims of abuse in the back of her novel When the Bough Breaks.
These writers saved lives. Words matter. Society needs to change. It
needs to grow. Writers aren't powerless. Fiction changes people. People
make up society. A saved life may later become essential to society's
change. What would the American Revolution have been without George
Washington?
If you change people, you change society. The 1960's social revolution
transformed American culture. We've come a long way. We can't stop now.
The world needs further transformation.
There are nights when all you can do is cry, when you've been fighting
long and hard and are sick of it, nights that your confidence plummets
and you don't know what happened to your faith. We all have them. It's
hard to keep going against opposition. Don't stop. When it feels like
all is lost--write.
Words matter. We are not meaningless. We are the future.
Copyright
© 2003, H. E. Smith. All rights reserved.
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