First one about breaking up the problem - not the problem of ‘climate collapse’ but the problem of writing successfully into a situation into which it is impossible to write. What are the sub-problems? (This is the ex-management consultant speaking.) A) How to write powerfully from a feeling of overwhelming powerlessness. B) How to maintain the mental flexibility to write with a full range of emotion and cognition when the brain is flooded with terror/anger/despair. C) How to make interesting a topic which repels the majority of people. D) How to write effectively about a topic on which none of us is able to grasp all the nuance. Etc.
Then the second thought: what are the analogies of people who have done it before. Again, not specifically about climate breakdown - but about the other monstrous topics which feel to those experiencing them like existential threats (because once a threat feels existential it becomes nigh-on impossible to write well about it, regardless of whether it’s the planet that will be destroyed or ‘merely’ a single person aka oneself). The really big ones that spring to mind - the huge injustices/terrors/powerlessnesses under which some people have successfully written well: slavery, colonialism, segregation, extreme misogyny. So who did manage to write that? How did they do it? What type of person did they need to be/become in order to do it?
And then, I think, the answer of how to write about climate breakdown et al moves a little closer.
Two thoughts.
First one about breaking up the problem - not the problem of ‘climate collapse’ but the problem of writing successfully into a situation into which it is impossible to write. What are the sub-problems? (This is the ex-management consultant speaking.) A) How to write powerfully from a feeling of overwhelming powerlessness. B) How to maintain the mental flexibility to write with a full range of emotion and cognition when the brain is flooded with terror/anger/despair. C) How to make interesting a topic which repels the majority of people. D) How to write effectively about a topic on which none of us is able to grasp all the nuance. Etc.
Then the second thought: what are the analogies of people who have done it before. Again, not specifically about climate breakdown - but about the other monstrous topics which feel to those experiencing them like existential threats (because once a threat feels existential it becomes nigh-on impossible to write well about it, regardless of whether it’s the planet that will be destroyed or ‘merely’ a single person aka oneself). The really big ones that spring to mind - the huge injustices/terrors/powerlessnesses under which some people have successfully written well: slavery, colonialism, segregation, extreme misogyny. So who did manage to write that? How did they do it? What type of person did they need to be/become in order to do it?
And then, I think, the answer of how to write about climate breakdown et al moves a little closer.
(PS - this might potentially have been more of an answer to yesterday’s post, but it stands, I think.)