writing blog

How To Find Hope In A World Falling Apart

~ ChanAtkins ~ 4 Comments

I was contacted this week by a younger writer who wanted to know how I was able to keep writing when dealing with my own doomerism. In case you are not familiar with the term ‘doomerism’, it basically describes people who have a fatalistic and pessimistic view of the future of humanity. I’d never heard of the term but it makes perfect sense, particularly for younger people. It’s all right for the rest of us, isn’t it? Chances are, if you’re over forty, you’ve had an education, found a partner, maybe had kids, you have a home and a career and if the whole world ended tomorrow, at least you had a life for a while. At least you had the chance to experience a certain amount of things. Younger people quite rightly fear that they won’t get the chance. Everywhere you look, everything is very bad. For creative people this can be a real problem. How can you sit down and write poems or stories when you’re convinced the world will end before you get a chance to share them?

Image by Dorothe from Pixabay

To answer this, first of all let’s take a quick look at the reasons young people are experiencing doomerism.

  • Climate change – probably the biggest concern for young people today. This summer has really brought it home. Wildfires, droughts, water shortages, crop failure… These things are happening and happening on our own doorsteps. The UK is having its driest summer since 1935 and recently broke the record of highest temperature recorded when we tipped over 40 degrees. We are used to being a wet green country, not a parched dry one. Many counties here have hosepipe bans and restrictions in place and although some rain has now arrived, the dry weather is predicted to go on until October. We had a dry winter last year and if we get another one, we are in real trouble.
  • The cost of living – another worldwide issue, but one that is really affecting people right now where I live. One of the big supermarkets is about to introduce a buy now-pay later scheme for food shopping. Seriously. Wages are falling as inflation is spiralling. It is becoming impossible here for young people to rent a home, let alone buy one. Our money is not even stretching to cover the basics which means more and more people are working just to live and life should not be like that. It’s depressing. Especially for young people.
  • Fuel crisis – whichever way you look at it, we are in trouble. The big companies are raking in record profits while UK households are seeing their bills soar to levels that will be simply unaffordable for most. The war in Ukraine has added to the problem with some European countries planning to ration gas amid fears of power shortages and cuts.
  • Threat of nuclear war – We haven’t been this close to possible nuclear war since the 1980’s and it’s terrifying.

I could probably go on! But I think the list above covers the big ones and hints towards their implications such as food shortages, famine, decimation and extinction of wildlife, recession…

So, not a lot to feel hopeful about maybe? And how the hell could anyone put pen to paper with all this fear running around their head? I mean, with this shit to look forward, why put an effort into anything? It’s all pointless, right?

Nope.

Not to me. And here is why.

  1. You are alive. Whether your life is what you imagined or hoped it would be, whether everything feels hopeless or not, whether you are rich or poor, fat or thin, tall or short, you are alive. You exist. You are here. You didn’t get flushed down the toilet, you weren’t lost to a miscarriage, you didn’t die in the womb or when being born, or as an infant. None of us know how much time we have here but while we have it, we ought to grab it with both hands and make the most of it. Easier said than done, I know, but every now and then just think about it. You are alive. You are the only you. No one else like you has ever existed and no one else ever will. You are a one off.
  2. You are young. A lot can happen in a short time. A lot can happen in a lifetime. It sucks to be born in such a turbulent times but people have been born in worse times. Don’t let it beat you. Refuse to. Fight back any way you can. Be resilient. Be tough as hell. You deserve a life and to be happy just like the rest of us. You haven’t got it as easy as previous generations but you can change it.
  3. Economic and societal systems change. They have before and they will again. We are currently, in my view, at the end stage of capitalism. It’s eating itself and destroying the planet and it can’t go on much longer. But we used to live under other systems and we can do again. Nothing stays forever. Everything has its time and then time moves on. I think we are in for a lot of chaos due to capitalism, what it has done to the planet and to us, but something else will emerge because it always does.
  4. It gets worse before it gets better. I truly believe this. Sadly, humans seem to have to let things get really, really bad before they wake up to what is going on and start to demand change. That’s far harder when the establishment control most of the media but eventually people’s lives become so opposite to what the media is peddling, that they realise they have been duped. This is happening right now with people waking up to the fact energy and water companies should never have been privatised and run for profit. It might take a while to change things to help people, but it all starts with public opinion shifting and it is.
  5. When things are scary, knowledge is power. I like to know what is going on so that I can prepare for the worst case scenario. I’m not exactly a dooms day prepper. I don’t have an underground bunker, weapons or a hazmat suit stashed in the wardrobe, but I do like to be prepared as much as I can. It makes me feel better, less helpless. When Russia invaded Ukraine and there was fearful talk of a nuclear war, I started researching how to survive one. I keep a survival notebook full of tips on how to find water, filtrate and sterilise it, different ways to start fires, build shelters, and so on. I add to it all the time. Anything that might be handy. I buy more basic foods than I need just to keep up a good supply. It might be useless, it might be nowhere near enough, but it is something and it is better than doing nothing because it makes me feel less helpless. One major thing everyone should get to grips with right now is growing their own food and collecting their own water. Hopefully this record breaking summer has woken people up to that.
  6. Words can change the world. Think about the power of words and books to change the world and shift opinions. It’s staggering. Stories are what bring us together and stories help humans interpret the world and respond to it. Writing and other creative pursuits are so important during difficult times. As a writer, you have the power to hold a mirror up to society and let people know what is going on.
  7. Writing is therapeutic. It really is! But you have to do it and commit to sticking to it to really feel the benefits. If you give up on writing or allow doomerism to put you off and consider it pointless, then you’re going to feel even worse. Writing can help you, so let it. Write about your fears, your hopes, your anger, your disappointment. Pour your thoughts, emotions and dreams into characters and stories that will carry the weight for you.
  8. Writing allows an escape. Just like reading, when times are tough, writing allows you an escape into another world. I love my other worlds and I feel the longing to escape to them whenever I’ve had a stressful day. Those worlds are your creations and you can control them and vanish into them any time you like.
  9. Don’t lose hope. Despite everything, we have to hold on to hope. Sometimes it feels like the world is full of bad people and not worth saving but I think tough times bring out the best in people; something more primal and ancient emerges when our backs are against the wall. I always remember a quote I once came across that said whenever you see a tragedy, look for the people who are helping. It’s simple but true. Cars crash on the road, people stop, phone the emergency services, run in to help if they can. Natural disasters occur and people rush in to save strangers. Everywhere that something terrible happens, you will see ordinary people helping others. It is in our instincts to help and protect each other and I still believe that most people are good.
  10. Fight back. Join a political party that shares your concerns for the future. Volunteer, spread the word, or just bring up the conversation with your family, workmates or in your place of education. Conversations need to be had about where we are all going so why not start them? You might just make a few people think about it for the first time. In short, if you give up, the bad guys win and we can’t let them do that.

I hope this is a helpful list to any young people feeling understandably anxious about the future right now. Is there anything you would add to it? Feel free to comment and share!

Ways To Beat January Gloom

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

I’ve always hated January. To me, it’s the Monday morning of all the months. And that first Monday back to work and school in January has always been something I’ve dreaded. I love the festive period and it always seems to arrive just when we need it most. The Autumn has stretched into Winter, Summer seems like it never happened, and the days are short, dark and cold. We are all tired and grumpy and need a break and Christmas arrives just in time to provide just that. This Christmas was just how I wanted it. My eldest came back from University (the first time we have seen her since September!) and I had two weeks off from all my writing clubs. I made sure everything was ticked off my endless to-do-list just before school broke up, and that meant I could totally relax over the two week holiday. It was everything I hoped it would be. Slow, lazy, snuggly and warm. We shared lazy days lounging around, snuggling under blankets or drinking hot chocolate in front of a roaring fire. We had the most beautiful Christmas tree and by Christmas Eve, there was an exciting mountain of gifts piled up under it. It all went smoothly, including the dinner with my mum, and visiting various relatives. But at the back of my mind was always the grumbling dread that January was on its way.

It’s just such a bleak and depressing month. Spring feels a million miles away, Summer a distant dream. There is little to look forward to apart from dark mornings and worsening weather. I always get that intense ‘back-to-school’ feeling towards the end of December. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job. I am very fortunate to have a writing-related job and I come out of each of my writing clubs smiling, because it really is a joy. But life is pretty hectic and enjoying a break is something I am loathe to say goodbye to. Our normal lives consist of so much driving around in order to get everyone to their job, school or college, and then picked up again, not to mention other activities such as Beavers. Monday to Wednesday is crazy with no time to breathe, but I am lucky enough to have Thursdays and Fridays free. It gives me two days to catch up on all the admin and preparation that goes with my job and maybe fit in some gardening or writing if I am really organised!

This year, I decided to try and pre-empt my usual January depression. I don’t like wishing time away and I hate the feeling that everything is flat and bleak. I decided to rail against it and started thinking of ways I could enter January with a more positive mind-set. It’s not been easy but here is a list of the things I am trying to focus on to get through this Monday of a month!

Image by Moni Mckein from Pixabay
  • Plan my goals for 2022 – I do this every year and it really helps me feel a bit more excited about January. I write a list of ten writing and non-writing related goals and then at the end of the year I read them again and write another post about how the reality panned out. It’s quite exciting to get them written down and gives me a kick up the backside to get going!
  • Sort out my seed tin – Another little thing that just cheers me up once the Christmas tree has come down. I sort out my seed tin, add any new packets, label envelopes and so on. It reminds me that I can start planting a few things now and that always cheers me up!
  • Start planting what I can – so far I have planted garlic, leeks and onions. There is plenty more to do and I will try and get a bit done throughout the month. This always feels like quiet rebellion. Sod you, January, I am making plans for Summer! It gives me hope to plant new things. It makes me smile.
  • Tidy up the vegetable patch – It gets a bit neglected in the winter months, but I made myself go out there the other day and I was surprised that so much is still going. I picked some onions, leeks and spring onions and noticed kale, carrots and cabbages all still thriving! I was quite delighted to realise I had kept the patch going through the winter! I weeded a fair bit and tidied up, but there is plenty more to do and I aim to get out there as much as I can this month.
  • Embrace the beauty of Winter – I don’t hate Winter, I just hate January. So I try to remind myself how lucky I am to experience the change of seasons. I enjoy watching the same landscapes alter throughout the year and right now everything is cold, hard and coated in sparkling frost. The birds are singing though and daffodils are pushing up through the frozen ground. Even the bare trees have a certain stark beauty at this time of year. I just need to remind myself to appreciate it before it all changes and softens for Spring.
  • Embrace the slower rhythm of short, dark days – Everyone loves the summer with its long, hazy days and the added freedom this brings. Winter forces us all inside and its dark when we wake up and dark before dinner time. In the summer, we run around more, we pack more in, we go out more and have trips and activities. There is less of this in the Winter but that’s not a bad thing. I’m going to enjoy the slower pace, curl up under a blanket and read more books. I’ve devoured so many over Christmas, it’s been wonderful. Winter is a time for hunkering down, keeping warm and slowing down.
  • Book a holiday – We last had a family holiday in October 2020. It was a holiday postponed from April 2020 when we were in lockdown. We had hoped to book something else for the summer or even for the October of 2021, but prices were sky high! Instead, we filled our summer with free and cheap days out. However, prices for the kind of holidays we can afford (Haven caravan parks around the UK!) have gone down again and as we received some money for Christmas, we decided to book something for the summer holiday. The very last week in August, which feels like an eternity away, but it will soon be here. I booked it just a few days after Christmas and it really cheered me up.
  • Nature watching – me and my youngest are quite into bird watching lately. I’m glad he shares my joy when we spot something unusual or observe the playful habits of native birds. We also look out for deer, foxes, weasels, stoats and herons and are lucky enough to see most each week where we live. It reminds me that life goes on, and January is just a word I really shouldn’t give much power to!
  • Plan for next Christmas – This is something that cheers me up too. I normally start my Christmas shopping in January. I start a new list in my Christmas notepad and write down everyone’s names and start thinking about next year. I’ll pick up odd things or order something if I get a good idea and it keeps me smiling.

After all that, I really do feel better about facing January. There is lots to look forward to and before I know it, it will soon be February!

How do you feel about January? Is it a month you dread or welcome? What do you do to cheer yourself up when Christmas is over and Summer is so far away? Feel free to comment and share!

My 2022 Goals

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

It’s time to set my goals for the year ahead! This is a little tradition for me now, with me setting out goals in January of each year and then analysing the reality of them each December. I set myself ten goals last year and achieved eight, so that’s going to be tough to beat! But here we go, my goals for the year ahead.

  1. Publish my new short story and poetry collection: The Old Friend and Other Stories and Poems. This book is ready to go! I am just waiting for the front cover to be finalised and once that’s done I will choose a date and organise a two month launch plan. Totally doable!
  2. Do a rewrite of The Day The Earth Turned Series. All four books are finished and at the same fourth draft stage. I am now going back to the start to rewrite them all, one by one. I have new chapters to add, some characters to develop further and I am planning to try changing the tense to present. I think this will give it the extra kick it needs, but we will see! This will be a time consuming goal but one I really must prioritise.
  3. Finalise book one of the Fortune’s Well series I’ve co-written with Sim Sansford. By finalise I mean finish our final edits, send to the proofreader, contact designer for a front cover, make the final, final edits and plan a launch.
  4. Continue to write chapters for the spin-off book to The Boy With The Thorn In His Side series. The spin-off idea arrived a few years back and a year ago I couldn’t resist making notes for it, which soon evolved into chapters. I wrote these up a few months ago and continued writing up to chapter 22. I have to prioritise The Day The earth Turned and the Fortune’s Well series this year as they are both finished and ready to polish up and publish, but I always need to be writing something fresh and new too so this is the one I will work on when I can. It has a working title of At Night They Played In The Road.
  5. Continue to add to all my other book ideas. I need to add my zombie apocalypse idea to my upcoming books page. I have almost filled a notepad with longhand entries to this diary style book but I haven’t written any in a few weeks now. I will continue to carry it around and add to it when I feel the urge. There are two other writing projects I need to add to the upcoming books page. One is another YA series, this time with a supernatural theme and one is an adult family mystery. It will be many years before I get to either but I must continue to make notes when I get ideas!
  6. Be more active. During the lockdowns I was very active in my garden and just in general but whenever things went back to normal I fell back into the trap of being tired from work and not keeping up outdoor activities. I really want to get stronger and fitter again in 2022 so I aim to be outside as much as I can. I have even ordered a campfire tripod and dutch oven so we can try cooking outside more often. I just want to be as active and outdoorsy as I possibly can!
  7. Do better in the veg plot. I didn’t do too badly last year but every year I hope to improve so this has to go on the list again. I got a voucher for Xmas from my sister for plant plugs and have ordered a lovely selection to start me off on the right track. My mother-in-law also bought me a huge bag of vegetable and herb seeds, as well as wooden labels, bee bombs and bird food. I am so excited and can’t wait to get stuck into gardening again!
  8. Launch a second community writing project with Chasing Driftwood Writing Group. In 2021 we finally released our first anthology – Stay Home: A Year of Writing Through Lockdown. The anthology is a mixture of personal essays, short stories and poetry on the lockdown experience. Sales have been good and are helping to fund our next project – The World You Gave Us. We hope to collect essays, short stories and poetry from young writers only this time and eventually publish another anthology.
  9. Get better at marketing my books. Haha, this one is always up there! I will endeavour to try harder though! I have been getting better at blogging regularly and posting on social media. It’s my newsletter I need to get more consistent with and getting reviews!
  10. Be happy, don’t worry! I intend to be as happy as I can be. I aim to strive to always see the positive. I will try as hard as I can to leave the world better than I found it, be aware and informed, but not allow myself to become drenched in cynicism or dragged down by useless worrying. I must remind myself daily that I only have one short life and it’s up to me what I do with it. I must remind myself that worrying never achieves anything, that most people are good and the world is worth saving. I will continue to do whatever I can to give back to nature and do whatever I can to keep a smile on my face.

So, that’s it, my goals for the year ahead. Let’s hope it’s a good one. Let’s hope we see some positive changes, some hope, some kindness. Let’s hope things get better out there, not worse! Are you setting any goals for the year ahead? Feel free to comment and share! Thank you for following my blog and reading my posts. Its means a lot to me to know you are there. I wish all of you a very happy New Year!

5 Ways This Crazy World Helps My Writing

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

I could also have titled this post; ‘5 Ways Writing Helps Me Deal With This Crazy World’, because it works both ways. Writing helps me cope with this world and everything going on in it, and the world helps my writing by providing so much inspiration and material! Win win, if you want to put a positive spin on it. I could also have called this post; ‘How The Hell Do Non-Writers Even Survive?’, because seriously, I have no idea. If I didn’t have writing, I don’t know how would I cope. Anyway, here goes. The world is a messed up place but I don’t let any of it go to waste;

  1. Anxiety– I use the mess in my stomach and pretend I’m one of my characters. I play out the scene. I feel the churn and the dread weighing me down. That tightness in my chest. Like it’s hard to breathe. Like you don’t want to think about anything for too long or you might start crying and never stop. I take all that and put it into my characters. I become them. I play act. I change my worries and fears to theirs. I make use of it.
  2. I explore darkness – through my characters. Their stories are nearly all ones I have stood on the edge of. I’ve stood there and peered into the darkness. I’ve wondered about it and thought about it and been tempted by so many things inside the dark. But I have my characters and I explore it through them. I don’t have to go into the darkness, because I do it through them instead.
  3. I leave behind a legacy – For someone who is not religious, I’m not particularly scared of dying, but I do think about death a lot. Because the world is so messed up, and humans so delightfully flawed, I sometimes like to think of my books as my legacy. I’m leaving my thoughts, feelings, dreams, fears and hopes inside my books and these will live on after I do. My response to this world and this life is my writing. All my books, all my stories, my characters are all little bits of me, all part of me and who I am and when I die, my ancestors will be able to know me better than anyone, by reading it all.
  4. I weave the craziness into my stories – I make sense of the world and politics and social issues by writing about them. Anything that angers, upsets or confuses me is woven into my stories. My books all deal with social issues and I love delving into gritty subjects in this way. It gives me a chance to sort through my own thoughts and beliefs, and this dying world gives me a lot of material.
  5. People watching for material -It’s weird being a writer because on the one side you are naturally introverted and shy, but on the other, you are constantly baring your fragile soul to the world. You often distrust people and try to avoid them, yet they are endlessly fascinating to you and provide juicy material for characters and stories. It’s great though because you can go out into the world, soak up all the messy people then come home and expel it all through words.

So, there you have it. I don’t like this world or the people in it a lot of the time. I’m terrified of where we are all heading. But at least I’m getting the constant urge to write! What do you think, folks? Please feel free to comment and/or share. Does writing help you deal with the state of the world right now, or the worries in your own life? Or is the world happily providing you with enough material for a lifetime?