It's go time

This is how the dragons go down

Dear Writer,

Hey, guess what? We’re winning.

Hear me out.

We have used our art to steadily chip away at these power structures for a long, long time. I mean…

Emancipation.
Women's vote.
Birth control.
No-fault divorce.
Civil rights.
Abortion.
Voting protections.
Black president.
Gay marriage.
#MeToo

These were all arrows that pierced the scales of these dual dragons that have plagued our society for far too long, and the dragons have been fighting all the way, with some victories, but mostly losses.

And now, the dragons are almost dead, and have nothing left to lose.

That, admittedly, is when they are at their most dangerous.

But here's the thing about dragons.

They don't go down peacefully.

You know. You’ve written them. Have you ever written a dragon (be it an actual dragon in a high fantasy, or a dragon wearing a sonofabitch suit at the head of a boardroom table in a more modern story) who just realized they were wrong, gave up, and went away?

No. Because that’s not how dragons work.

And it’s not how they die.

When they die, they release an unholy, horrific scream that is almost worse than the devastation they wrought in the first place. They seethe and rage and throw a temper tantrum like a Hollywood director. They set everything on fire as they die, because if they're going to go down... well, so will everything else.

But. They. Go. Down.

These power structures wouldn’t be behaving like such petulant, temper-tantruming motherfuckers if they weren't feeling a mortal wound. A wound we put there, with our community, and our love for each other, and our desire to protect each other.

With our art.

You ever wonder why their first move is always burning or banning books? Jesus. Get a new move, guys. You can’t destroy the ideas that have already stamped their message on the hearts of our readers, so fuck off.

And also, you know what?

We’re just going to write more anyway. Do your fucking worst.

In every story, there is a dark moment.

Our victory is already assured, because if they could have beaten us through their regular sneaky shit—murder as usual with shiny, white smiles as they wipe the blood off their talons on their red ties—they would have.

They dropped the dog whistles, because of us.

They shucked their cheaply made for temporary purpose Suits of Respectability, because of us.

They stopped pretending their shit was about anything other than keeping the dual dragons of White Supremacy and Patriarchy alive for a little while longer, because of us.

Our fight has not changed.

In fact, we have gained a clarity now that maybe we didn’t have before. We tried to avoid this fight, this time, to put it off for a little while longer but baby… they had infiltrated our side of things anyway. We were never not going to have this fight. We hoped it might not be as devastating as we now know it will be, but this battle was always in the cards.

So what now?

Yeah, it’s fucking bleak, I’m not gonna lie. A little overwhelming. There are so many fronts for this battle and so many people are going to die and the only thing we really have on our side is our numbers, but you as an individual are one person with one person’s finite energy, so what do you even do?

Look, everyone has a different role to play here.

For writers, now is when we write.

Now is when we tell stories, over and over again, about how the dragon goes down. We commit its blood into our words and we kill it with a million tiny paper cuts from every page that turns as readers live in worlds we create where the motherfuckers go down screaming, every time, and the World Has Changed.

Dear Writer is back.

And we’re gonna learn how to tell stories. Go grab your free digital copy of How Story Works at my website. That’ll help you refine your story craft, and I want you to have that knowledge as you move forward with your pen as your sword.

We’re going to write until our pages flutter down on the smoking corpses of these dragons, covering them in a snowstorm of pages upon which we will build our new world without them.

They’re almost dead.

We’re almost there.

It’s go time.

Everything,

L