Writing for you, for me

I’m a cynic. I am a critical, cynical, and occasionally condescending person. I look around and see injustice and hypocrisy and stupidity wrapped in enviable praise. And yet, when I went to see the new Muppets film this last weekend I sobbed. Like a child. When I watch Superman and see Christopher Reeve, with conviction in his eyes, say that he fights for Truth, Justice, and the American way. That he never lies. I get chills.

Gandhi once said: “Be the change you want to see in the world”. I write that world. I write a world where good triumphs over evil, where money and power mean nothing, where style has no credibility and substance rules supreme, and where true love really does conquer all.

And yet, if I write it and no one reads it, it’s still just my world. So, perhaps pathologically, I seek to write about justice and substance – but I’m prepared to tell you whatever story I need to in order to share that experience with you. Because when we believe it together it means more. So if the world wants to read about New York Socialites or Fuzzy Bunnies or Drunken Trailer Trash – then I’ll be there, pen in hand.

I don’t write thrillers, or steampunk, or supernatural suspense, or chick lit. I write a world where courage and sacrifice (whatever form they take) are the supreme measure of what is good. Where honor will outlast treachery, and the temporary spoils of life don’t make you worth listening to, and can’t save you in the end.

Genre? That’s just window dressing.

Lasting story is the perseverance of unyieldingly innocence in the face of the unrelenting rationality of cynicism.

So, I guess I do write for myself. But whatever ending I create in which virtue outlasts, I want the world to come along, because if that’s the only meaningful change I can make in the world, then it isn’t a wasted life.