Choose Your Stories
Writers have power to focus on lifting up or keeping down - which will you choose?
“Aren’t our lives moments of small things that invite us to act?”
- Cami’s newsletter from 8/31/23
The other day, I put my AirPods to noise cancellation, listened to sounds of nature, and wrote about what is real and what is manufactured. What is essential. What we can do without.
I’d been doom-scrolling social media, which was intensifying my anxiety, and I couldn’t sleep, my mind on a conveyor belt of all the hatred in the world. Hatred of me and my people, an old and apparently perennial thing.
Then the wifi went out. Like literally - no wifi for 2 days. Thank you, universe.
And so I focused on my friends who were visiting from Kosovo and fun, lively, love- and laughter-filled conversations about pretty much everything, which is what you do with good friends who get you on a soul level.
Small things invite us to act.
A child crying, so you hold them until they feel safe. A friend feeling lonely, so you make a cup of tea and sit across from them, listening.
Human connection elevates life. It’s what stories center on - all of these things, feeling insignificant and wanting to matter, feeling alone and needing to connect. The stories we seek out make us feel better about ourselves and the world, give us hope, show us possibility.
My finger is healing from surgery, so next week, I will again start my days with writing. Ohmigod, I cannot wait! To wake up in the quiet and calm, steam foamy milk into my tea, light a candle, play gentle music and look at the words.
Yesterday, I was featured on the Too Jewish radio show, hosted by Rabbi Sam Cohon, who told me that he receives Holocaust books all the time, so when Woman of Valor, my recent novel, came across his desk, he was glad for the refreshing approach to Jewish storytelling.
In case you haven’t read it yet (what are you waiting for?! Buy it here and here and here), Woman of Valor is the story of a young Jewish woman who chooses to be Orthodox and loves it. She loves her life, loves her husband passionately, loves being a mother…and then her son is abused at school and her ex-boyfriend pops back into her life online. What will she do? What will she choose? Who does she want to be despite challenges and scrutiny?
Things happen in the story, suspenseful and distressing things, but it’s ultimately a story about choosing your identity and your community and choosing a life you love.
I made a deliberate decision to write a positive representation of religion, because there are plenty of books out there about how hard it is to be religious. I wanted to write a happy story, even with all the inevitable challenges that come before us.
There are no new stories, only new ways of telling them. Aren’t we tired of telling, living, reading stories of persecution, hatred and despair? We must tell them, yes, because they are real and apparently cannot entirely leave us, but can we also balance those with stories of hope, love and a better world?
We can choose which tropes to focus on and which tropes to live.
In my friends’ lecture at the University of Michigan last week, Robert Wilton and Elizabeth Gowing spoke about their book, No Man’s Lands. Rob quoted a poem by Fortesa Latifi: “Even war is about love, even love is about country.”
It’s all in the spin of a story, isn’t it? Aren’t we all yearning for love and home?
Let’s spin the story we want to read, to live, to believe. That’s the power of the pen. And every writer has it.
Stories can change the world. We learn through stories from the youngest age, and we are doing it now, in our doom-scrolling and fixations and lie-telling. But we can choose stories that lift us up, rather than stories that keep us down or divide us. The story you write might just change someone’s perspective of what is true and good. That is power.
Why write the story you’re writing? Have a good reason - because your words have impact, weight, they matter, and they can make a difference.
Podcast Update
I’m grateful to have been interviewed on a few really great podcasts recently. Here are the latest - give them a listen!
Best of Women’s Fiction Exciting 2023 Fall Debuts
Classes, Cohorts & Writealongs
If you’re a writer in search of community, I’ve got you!
My next FREE monthly Writealong is Nov. 11th. Sign up here.
I am teaching three classes in the coming weeks — Demystifying Show, Don’t Tell (starts Nov. 2nd), Hemingway and the Art of the Sentence (Nov. 12th) and Creating Your Author Brand (Dec. 10th).
There are two spots available in my weekly Accountability Cohort starting in November! And I have a spot open in The Writers Community that begins in January.
Thanks for Reading
I’m grateful for your attention. If you like what you’ve read in the Rebel Author Newsletter, I’d love it if you would share this weekly free letter with others who might appreciate it. And if you’re keen on supporting the people who bring value to your inbox, I’d love it if you’d become a paid subscriber.
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Wishing you all good things and very happy writing time.
Love, Lynne
I love to write stories based on real-life situations and stretching my imagination to enhance the tale is so much fun!