When everything is a Work-in-Progress

Margaret Atwood and her "unburnable" book

My current work-in-progress is a dystopian fiction and one of the main features of the plot is  that the women have to wear QR codes pinned to their clothing when they leave their homes. It’s The Handmaid’s Tale, meets 1984, with a little The Giver splashed in for good measure. 

I was about two-thirds of the way through it when November 5th rolled around. And I was making excellent headway. Chapters were being written in the span of a day or two, ideas were flowing, timelines were timelining. And then…November 5th. You can imagine how much writing in this not-dystopian-enough-for-my-comfort work-in-progress is going now. I’ll give you a hint. It’s not. 

I can’t bring myself to write anything in it. I just stare at my screen and feel the bottomless pit of doom hollowing in my stomach, along with Aaron Parnus’ voice bouncing around my brain, telling me there’s “Horrible Breaking News.” At this point, it feels like he’s posting a TikTok every thirty seconds and I’m really going to need him to take a nap or something, just to give me a break from it all.

I think about Margaret Atwood and wonder if she would have been able to stomach writing The Handmaid’s Tale if Canada had been nine days into a fascist regime or if she would have curled into the fetal position and buried her head in her favorite comfort book. (I assume her comfort book is not Twilight by the Mormon queen, Stephanie Meyer. Though I kind of hope that it is, because how hilarious would that be?)

I keep wondering if my first novel will even make it to publication. It’s full of anti-fascist, LGBTQ+ content. Set in the 1930s, it talks about the propaganda being thrown at people, right and left. My book talks about the red flags my queer characters see around them. The trans and non-binary characters are the proverbial canaries in the coal mine, shouting at the top of their lungs, desperately trying to get anyone to pay attention to what is rapidly becoming a dire situation. Will Give My Love to Berlin be banned?

I will admit, there’s a tiny part of me that finds the prospect of penning a banned book mildly thrilling. To share the title of “banned book author” with the likes of Margaret Atwood, Stephen Chbosky, John Green, Lois Lowry, and Suzanne Collins? How exciting. Plus, imagine the social media content I could make from having a banned book. The TikTok content alone would garner an awful lot of publicity. That is, if TikTok doesn't end up banned as well.

On the other hand, I really just want people to read it. I want people to know the story about these incredible humans that lived in Berlin during a time when fascism was rising like flood waters, pooling around their ankles as they walked to work every day. I want people to know Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, I want them to know Dora Richter, I want them to know the trans women who lived and worked at the Institute of Sexual Science. I want them to know that these people existed and thrived and loved in a time when the government was doing everything it could to destroy them. 

Mostly, I want other queer humans to read it and to see the hope and triumph that is there, hidden in the pages, whispering to them, “You can do this. You can be brave and scared and furious and sad and triumphant all at once. Because that’s what we were.” 

Take care of yourselves, friends. Schedule breaks from the news, drink your water, get fresh air, and check in on your friends. If I’ve learned anything from spending three years of my life researching Germany in the 1930s, it’s that we will need our communities to face the (orange) mountain in front of us. 

Some great organizations who could use your time or your dollars include: Kaleidoscope Youth Center in Central Ohio, the ACLU, Elevated Access, People for the American Way, the Transgender Law Center, Midwest Access Coalition, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Planned Parenthood, CAIR, Immigration Impact, Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, ProPublica, and the Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights.

I also highly recommend checking out Under the Desk News, Dan Rather, and the World Health Organization on Substack in order to remain connected to the news in a way that doesn't feel quite as stressful as getting notifications from Aaron Parnus every ten seconds.

Sending you all love. It's only been a week, but on the plus side, that means only three years, eleven months, twenty-one days, and roughly twenty hours until that orange potato is out of office.