Responsibilities

Hey, internet. It’s been a while.

I won’t bore you all with many of the details of why it’s been such a long time, but I will get into one particular reason.

When I was little, I used to write all of the time. Since the first grade, I would be writing my new novel, and I’d get home from swim practice, dripping wet, and I would just be excited to sit at the family computer for an hour or so to just… write. When my parents asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always had a single answer: I want to be a writer.

It took me a while to realize this, but I wasn’t finishing any of my novels. I wanted nothing more than to just be Christopher Paolini, to be a teenager with a best-selling novel. I felt an intense jealousy towards my peers who could start the projects they were passionate about and just finish them, as if it was nothing, while I toiled away on a never-ending page 15. Then, I went to college, I turned 20, and with no published novel yet, I felt like a failure (yes, I know how ridiculous this sounds now).

By the time I wanted to get back into it, I was years out of the habit of coming home, burning with the passion to sit at my computer and type out a few pages. I had even gotten out of the habit of trying to think of new story ideas, taking my life experiences at face value rather than thinking of how this could relate to my new favorite fictional character that I had made up in my head. The idea of starting to write again felt like climbing a mountain when it used to feel like flying, and that feeling terrified me.

Why was it so hard now? I started thinking of story ideas, but nothing stuck in my mind as something that was worth pursuing, and the few ideas I kind of liked didn’t seem right to me.

I hit a realization when I watched the Netflix show She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. Now stay with me here…

As a person in the LGBTQ+ community, I honestly thought there was quite a bit of representation of queer relationships in movies and shows, and I thought to myself well, that’s great! We’re represented, that’s good right? But it’s the way in which characters in minority groups are represented that matters, and the stuff I had watched before just hadn’t been cutting it. I started seeing more and more about how many LGBTQ+ characters are killed off in TV shows; they’re almost never a main character or even a minor character that lasts a while. They’re flashed like a fancy spectacle to the audience, then taken away before they can even think about the fear of ratings going down due to “controversy.” And even where there is real representation in certain communities, like the transgender character Max Sweeney in The L Word, it’s in a negative, insensitive, and often unrealistic light (even while in a show that’s centered around positive representation of lesbian women).

When I watched She-Ra, I was shocked by the positive representation of so many minority groups, all packed into one kid’s show. There are openly lesbian and gay relationships that aren’t just subtext (plus, spoiler alert, none of them get killed off), there’s a non-binary character, there’s a character on the autism spectrum, and the list goes on… there are also (according to viewers I’ve talked to who have gone through this) accurate representations of traumatic and toxic relationships — and unlike popular narratives like Twilight, where a toxic relationship is glorified and romanticized, they are properly dealt with, marked as wrong, and healthy relationship skills are taught in their place. Simply put, this show is MIND-BLOWINGLY amazing.

So what does this have to do with me and my inability to write?

I’ve realized that the story ideas I think of are a lot like the stories I knew growing up, the many many stories I came to love. But looking back at those stories, there are so many things I would want to change, and yet when I start writing, I shrink back into the mold of the stories that I grew up with. After all, it’s easier to write what you know.

But stories need to change. We need more, and better representations of minority and marginalized groups, and the stories need to come from writers that are in those groups. So, I’ve come to realize, I have a responsibility as a writer. A big one. Now is not the time to write the stories we grew up with; it’s the time to write stories we want our future children to grow up with, the new and improved versions of… everything.

That’s a lot of pressure. And with pressure, comes the inevitable and looming writer’s block.

So, I haven’t been writing all that much lately.

I plan on changing that, though. When I finished She-Ra, I texted my roommate (who had recommended the show) immediately and in all caps, announcing that someday, I am going to write a show like that. I started storyboarding that night, whipping up character ideas in a frenzy, and then… never got to the first page. But it was a start! I ended up hating the idea for a story I had come up with, but at least it was a start, and I’ll start again, and again, and again until I’m happy enough with something to get to that first page, then maybe a second… then keep going until I reach that never-ending page 15.

Wish me luck!