Chuck Wendig on Writing During Weird Times

Shit is weird.

Shit is weird.

SHIT

IS

W E I R D.

It’s not even that it’s bad —

I mean, ha ha, it is. It definitely is. But it’s also just fucking goofy. Our world is theater, and it’s currently being staged by a gaggle of goony dipshits. Political upheaval and social chaos and huge leaps forward in technology and regressive tumblebacks of justice and progress — it’s weed and fireworks and drones, it’s Twitter President and hellscape wildfires and flat-earthers, it’s coins to witchers and yoda-babbies and for some reason people are watching Friends? It’s way the fuck off the map. It’s not really dystopian — it’s dyspeptic, it’s twist-topian, it’s what-the-fuck-a-lyptic.

[…]

Tell the tale. The one that’s yours. The one that’s weird. The one that feels off-kilter, that other people aren’t sure about. This is not a safe era, and so we are not beholden to safe storytelling. Go as big and bold or as small and strange as you see fit. The world’s gone wacky and we gonna die (someday!), so step into the firelight, and we’ll join you by the fire to hear what you have to say.

—Chuck Wendig, Writer Resolution, 2020

I agree these are weird times. The question for me is, shoud we write weird to blend with the times, or should we write about more sane times to balance out the bizarre that surounds us.

In any case, we can’t ignore the times we are living, they give context to our writing.