Principles for the future

A roadmap for telling stories that envision a better world.

Like many people, 2020 has creatively consumed me. It’s hard to give your undivided attention to something, or put yourself in a truly creative flow, when so much is going on. The sheer onslaught of new information — some newly jaw-dropping story seems to be showing up four to six times a day — puts my brain in a reactive mode. Instead of being inventive and generative, I’m constantly aghast. I’m hopeful that it will be possible to re-find a sort of mental peace once the election has been and gone, but I’m also a realist. The pandemic will continue; the political clown show will continue; children have been permanently separated from their parents, creating an entire, lost Trump generation; we will not right all the wrongs of the last four years overnight.

I’ve been thinking it would be an interesting exercise to force myself into a generative mode about the future. Instead of reacting to the onslaught of awfulness and saying this is what I don’t want, which is almost a default biological reaction, what if we deliberately and proactively painted a picture of a possible future and said this is what I want?

It’s a surprisingly hard thing to do. Even thinking about the form of it — is it a manifesto? a short story? — brings difficult choices. But if…