Sarah WHQ

 

Sarah WHQ Hey Gina A brief content warning before we get into it. This newsletter contains politics, then writing, then some stuff about politics and writing, and then a brief bit of commerce, because ya know we have to pay for all these swear words somehow. Did you know they’re taxed now? 20% on every shit, fuck and arsehole. Capitalism ruins everything. You ready? So. Everything is fucked. <Kerching. Taxed> All we want is to be left in peace to wrap ourselves up in blankets and write stories about our weird little guys. Maybe do a bit of casual witchcraft. Maybe the odd spot of raging against the machine. But no. We can’t even have that because apparently 2025 is all about fascist coups and genocides and artic melts and apparently - apparently - it’s important that those things don’t happen. But here’s the thing: What the crap is one tiny writer of weird-arse fiction supposed to do? Hundreds of you have been messaging, saying you feel despondent or that it feels pointless to carry on writing with all this going on. A lot of us are feeling like we want to do something, but have no idea what.   We get it. Really we do. Faced with existential crisis after existential crisis, making up stories about those weird little guys can feel self-indulgent and futile. But that is how these things work: through calculated, strategic despair to stop you doing anything. Through chucking as much confusing, outrageous, disgusting shit at you as possible until it sticks and you are so overwhelmed, so covered in metaphorical political faeces, that you cannot do one single thing. Never mind the death and poverty and horror. No one wants to wear a poo suit. That is why every act of defiance, no matter how small, is necessary. It’s why every act of friction is important. And your stories are defiant. That doesn’t mean you have to be shouting as loudly as you can or writing anything other than your quiet 300 word flashes. You can just be quietly keeping on, exploring your reality, showing how things could be, how they should be, showing people who they are and what they could do. Checking out the fertile edges, the liminal plains, the parts where fiction meets reality and visa versa. The writing of stories, the telling of stories, the dissemination of stories, the sharing and togetherness and humanness of stories - is not a frivolous act in the face of multiple global crises. It is a celebration of the most basic human thing that we have and an affirmation of our shared humanity. Author and historian Howard Zinn said in his essay Artists In The Time Of War, that the job of an artist is "to think outside the boundaries of permissible thought and dare to say things that no one else will say." Writers don’t exist to hang around and see what happens next. We’re here to respond to the world in real time. To look at how things are and how things could be, to look at the world and reflect it back to itself. Your writing is not self-indulgent. It isn’t futile. It is important and you have to carry on. Which is what Writers’ HQ will be doing too. Carrying on with the thing we’ve always done: building true community with our writers, supporting you all to keep on going even when everything feels like hopeless bullshit, and helping you do the deep work you need to write the stories that need to be told. Please join us for our free community workshop on Thursday 27 February: Writing Through the Apocalypse. Go write about your weird little guys. Sarah & Team WHQ