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Activism, writing and all that good stuff
Apr. 10th, 2006 12:18 pmI spent yesterday morning answering phones for pledge drive at KFAI. KFAI is our local volunteer-run radio station. It features tons of incredibly diverse programming and I work pledge drives there twice a year, every year. Then I went to the immigration rights rally in St. Paul. There were about 30,000 people in attendance, most of them Latino with a few other folks from other communities thrown in. I hung out with friends from Minnesotans for a United Ireland and the local Green Party, many of whom, like me, have parents or grandparents who were immigrants. It was a lovely day: lots of good crowd energy, mostly positive news coverage. Afterward, we adjourned to a local coffee house and sat around trading lefty war stories and talking about books and gossiping. I met a local radical journalist whose work I've admired for a while and we traded writing stories and tips. It was all good.
The thing is, though, all of this used to be my life, with variations, before I started writing. I was generally out organizing and protesting and tabling and all that good stuff whenever I wasn't at work or experimenting with relationship angst in various forms. I was out to change the world. At one point or another between 1979 and 1996, I worked on reproductive rights campaigns, domestic violence, campus safety, GLBT issues, Central American solidarity, anti-apartheid, Take Back the Night, anti-Gulf War and other peace-related stuff and probably a bunch of other things that I can't even remember now. Some campaigns I was pretty peripheral on, others took over my life. Then in 1996, I started writing fiction. I had closed down my bookstore and was in the throes of law school and writing looked a whole lot prettier than anything else I was doing. It was also a lot more fulfilling. After that, it didn't take long to notice that energy and inspiration for writing came from the same source that my energy from activism did and that I needed to make a choice since I didn't have the energy to work full time, be active and be a professional writer.
I picked the writing, of course. Had to go with what made me happy. And I don't look back too often. Except for days like yesterday when I remember that there are a lot of things about my old life that I kind of miss. Writing is a pretty solitary thing. While I have a lot of friends who are writers and editors, I don't have a writing group. I write my work, I revise it, I give it to my second reader and I send it out. I don't talk about it much except in general terms. I miss the sense of community and the firm belief that I'm actively working toward a better world. I miss feeling like change for the better was coming SOON.
Mostly, I feel slightly guilty, like I'm not doing enough. I still volunteer at a few things every year, attend benefits and the occasional rally, send emails and donate money. But it's not quite the same thing. Mind you, I'm not saying that writing can't be activism, it's just that isn't usually the kind of writing I'm doing.
So what do you all do on those days when you're just not changing the world enough?
The thing is, though, all of this used to be my life, with variations, before I started writing. I was generally out organizing and protesting and tabling and all that good stuff whenever I wasn't at work or experimenting with relationship angst in various forms. I was out to change the world. At one point or another between 1979 and 1996, I worked on reproductive rights campaigns, domestic violence, campus safety, GLBT issues, Central American solidarity, anti-apartheid, Take Back the Night, anti-Gulf War and other peace-related stuff and probably a bunch of other things that I can't even remember now. Some campaigns I was pretty peripheral on, others took over my life. Then in 1996, I started writing fiction. I had closed down my bookstore and was in the throes of law school and writing looked a whole lot prettier than anything else I was doing. It was also a lot more fulfilling. After that, it didn't take long to notice that energy and inspiration for writing came from the same source that my energy from activism did and that I needed to make a choice since I didn't have the energy to work full time, be active and be a professional writer.
I picked the writing, of course. Had to go with what made me happy. And I don't look back too often. Except for days like yesterday when I remember that there are a lot of things about my old life that I kind of miss. Writing is a pretty solitary thing. While I have a lot of friends who are writers and editors, I don't have a writing group. I write my work, I revise it, I give it to my second reader and I send it out. I don't talk about it much except in general terms. I miss the sense of community and the firm belief that I'm actively working toward a better world. I miss feeling like change for the better was coming SOON.
Mostly, I feel slightly guilty, like I'm not doing enough. I still volunteer at a few things every year, attend benefits and the occasional rally, send emails and donate money. But it's not quite the same thing. Mind you, I'm not saying that writing can't be activism, it's just that isn't usually the kind of writing I'm doing.
So what do you all do on those days when you're just not changing the world enough?