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Up With People

By Chris Colcord

Fort Wayne Reader

2018-03-02


Recently a reader tracked me down on social media and wanted to engage with me about a couple of columns that I have written previously for this newspaper. I'm always happy whenever this happens, though I've learned from experience that it's usually not because they're dying to throw bouquets of flowers my way. Most often I've annoyed or angered them about something and they want to vent their opposition or at least pin me down so that I'll explain in greater detail my ridiculous opinions. And that's fine: it's nice to know someone takes you seriously enough to hate what you write.

And indeed, the reader didn't like what I was writing. It wasn't a specific column that she was criticizing, it was more the cumulative effect that my tone seemed to have on her: she hated my negativity. She wrote that while she appreciated some of the arguments I was making, and while she seemed to think that I was probably a decent person in real life (how she got this? I have no idea), she thought that the cynicism and dark humor that I employ in my writing was too depressing. It would be more effective, she thought, to not just strike a different tone but a different outlook all together. "Remember, if you're not lifting people up, you're tearing them down. Do you really want to do that?"

I left that question unanswered, while thanking her for talking the time to write to me. I told her I probably wouldn't be changing my tone anytime soon; I've gotten used to the sound of my own voice in my writing, and it's too late to change that now. We exchanged goodbyes in a civilized way and I let her know I appreciated the feedback, even if I don't plan on implementing her advice.

And that was true. I was so astounded by the "either/or" nature of her question that I didn't even know how to approach it. Art, creative writing is supposed to "lift people up?" Since when? And if it doesn't, it "tears them down?" Are those my only two options? I never once thought it was art's duty to do anything, positive or negative, for anyone; art was art, elemental, indivisible. And God knows I've never tried to lift anybody up with anything I've written; you hope what you write has some impact, somewhere, maybe, but you don't write out of some sense of decency or civic duty. Because if you do that, you're gonna make something so blatantly dishonest that you'll feel forever a fraud.

Though it's become apparent to me that a lot of people seem to go for that "lift me up" thing, which perhaps explains the enduring popularity of the modern sports movie. Every ad for every sports movie of the last fifty years tells you that you better be prepared to jump on your feet and cheer at the movie's end, which has always sounded like a vague threat to me. I've never felt comfortable watching movies that try to punch buttons as obviously and as doggedly as sports movies do, which is why the whole lot of them — Hoosiers; Rocky; Remember the Titans; The Blind Side — has always left me as cold and unmoved as a block of ice in a tomb.

I will admit, though, that while I've never actively tried to "lift people up" with my writing, I did abandon a project not long ago because I thought it was just too mean and misanthropic. And this was actually a bit of a sacrifice for me, because I thought the idea for the story was absolutely fascinating and I was truly committed to telling it.

I wanted to take a crack at a dystopian story and my imagination came up with a beaut--titled "The Millennial War," it was a post-apocalyptic, dystopian tale about what would happen if the current tension between Millennials and Baby Boomers exploded into actual War in the future. A dark, speculative fiction tale. I started writing it as a "Dispatches from the Front" narrative, after the "War" had begun and the apocalyptic skirmishes had disfigured the landscape, leaving the warring factions to battle for supremacy from their strongholds (the Baby Boomers in the NYC/DC area, the Millennials in Seattle/Portland/San Francisco.) It started out as a short story and quickly moved on to becoming a novella, and I even called a good friend to help spitball some tricky plot elements and exposition. It was creepy, and interesting, and of course, of the moment; I could focus on my own pointed opinions about Millennials and Boomers and paint them into the story.

But something happened as I got deeper and deeper into the story: I started to dread the writing sessions. And this wasn't just typical writer uncertainty and laziness and disappointment; I started to actively hate telling this story. Writing about apocalypse can be cathartic but it's also a little troubling to spend so much time imaging large-scale destruction and death. And the division between Millennials and Baby Boomers, a topic that I had been so eager to rip into in sociological detail, started to feel wearisome: the real division that was seeing around me was bad enough, did I really feel like mirroring that in the story I was writing?

And ultimately, I decided I didn't. I decided simply that I didn't want to bring something so ugly into the world. Even if it never got published, even if it just made the rounds of family and friends, still, I didn't want to be responsible for adding another patch of darkness to the world. As galling as it is to admit, I guess I didn't want to tear people down.

I'm hoping that that was a one-off, that I never feel the need to self-censor again. And I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna knock out some heart-warming story about a group of plucky basketball players from Sheep's Girdle, Indiana, who band together and take on the big boys and overcome adversity and and and and and and and. But it was a relief to stop writing that story. And look, I'm glad that there are more courageous writers out there than me, writers who are willing to hold darkness up for examination and not be afraid of what they might find. I'd like to think in my best hours, I could do the same. But I'm so glad I abandoned that story; it would be just about the last thing that anyone in the world would want to read right now.

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