I will admit that I’ve been slacking on my writing lately. While Funeral of Hopes is mostly ready for its June 2025 release, I still haven’t finished my final readthrough or compiled the publishing file. I also haven’t worked much on my freebie story, Saint Luridalr and the Peony Phoenix.

On a personal level, I’m doing fantastic, but the American sociopolitical environment is just too painful right now. Every day I read something that completely crushes me.

Plane crashes, deportations, the bird flu epidemic, constant attacks on the LGTB community: there’s so much going on, and I feel so helpless. After all, there’s not much I can do other than support my loved ones, donate to mutual aid groups, protest, speak out against bigotry, and be vigilant in my community.

I don’t have all the answers. I can just tell you that if you’re feeling this way, you’re not alone. What can we do to get through this? Here are some things I’m doing to keep my peace of mind.

Stay positive as an act of resistance.

Authoritarian governments thrive on terror. They expect people to become so fearful that they will comply in advance. We’re already seeing this, such as giant corporations kowtowing to anti-DEI initiatives even though they have never been explicitly told to do so.

Fear is the oil of the fascist machine. It keeps people from fighting back, makes them hide, stifles their imaginations, holds them in constant panic so that they can’t think things through. A fearful society cannot defend itself from enroaching attacks.

Anything we do to protect our peace and nourish our souls is resistance.

This doesn’t replace actual work: supporting mutual aid, physically resisting, advocating for our loved ones, protesting, refusing to submit. But it powers that work. You cannot keep going if you’re so scared you can’t leave the house. You must find things that will keep you feeling good so that you can go on.

For me, that’s rock climbing and horseback riding. I turn off my brain and stop thinking about all the horrible things in the world when I’m up on the wall or in the saddle. I don’t have the time to worry.

Try to find an activity that lets you turn off your mind and focus on the positives, other than writing. Something that keeps you feeling good and sane.

If you don’t have a thing right now, that’s okay. Think about something you have always wanted to do, such as painting or roller skating. Learn about it, watch videos, read tutorials. Join online groups and find like-minded people in your area who can join in with you. Seek low-cost ways to get involved; you’d be surprised what kinds of resources might be available in your community. (Libraries are always a good option!)

And do it. Commit to it. Whether that’s playing with clay for an hour a week or buying a membership to a gym, stick with it as long as you can. Feed that spark and see how far it takes you.

It’s okay to take a break from writing.

Earlier this year, I discussed the importance of self-discipline when it comes to writing. I still stand by everything I said, but I want to point out a certain part of that post:

Discipline requires you to be gentle and understanding with yourself. Of course, you must stay accountable, but you also cannot be so self-critical that you feel like giving up.

I have had to push back a few of my deadlines and be more flexible with myself. In addition to world events, I’m tackling some hard memories in therapy right now, which is making it even harder to focus.

Once we’re done processing this particular memory with EMDR, I’m going to finish Saint Luridalr and the Peony Phoenix so that it will be available by March or April.

This gives me a hard deadline to get started again, but it also provides cushion so that I can attend to other things and care for my mental health.

We’re living in hard times, and it’s alright that it may take you a little longer to get things done with all the existential stress going around. Be gentle with yourself. Accept that if you’re self-published, you have time; you set your own deadlines. Create mini-goals that are achievable but ambitious so that you maintain a flow without getting overwhelmed.

The work will be there for you when you’re ready. Your manuscript isn’t going to vanish. Take care of your IRL stuff and get back to it when it’s time.

Be okay doing nothing sometimes.

I heard a phrase recently that really changed my outlook: “defrag your brain.” Just like a computer needs to reboot and clear memory so it can perform well, you also need to give your brain some time to recharge by not forcing yourself to do anything useful.

You may think that sleep is when your brain gets a break, but that’s not true. In fact, your brain is hard at work while you’re asleep, flushing out toxins and reorganizing memories. That’s why you’re often told to “sleep on it” when trying to make a decision or memorize important information: your brain processes things while you’re resting.

So we can’t just rely on sleep to recharge ourselves, nor can we force ourselves to be productive 24/7 in hopes of chasing away the scaries. Sometimes, we need to just sit and chill for a while.

I’ve started giving myself at least 3 hours a week where I do absolutely nothing important. I don’t clean, I don’t write, I don’t work out, I don’t journal, nothing. I veg. I watch cute videos. I knit. I use my Paint By Number app. I might just lie down in bed and daydream for no reason.

This sounds like a lot of time, but it only comes out to about 25 minutes a day. If you have a half-hour to trawl social media, you have half an hour to do nothing. It’s better for you, anyway.

Stop doomscrolling.

I get sucked into hours of doomscrolling. As someone with an MA in International Relations, I find it really hard to disconnect from world affairs; I spent so long immersed in political theory and discussing current events with my peers that I feel like I have to know what’s going on at all times.

But I really don’t. These minute-by-minute breakdowns do not help me or anyone else. All I need to know is what will keep me and my loved ones safe.

So I’ve made it a habit to shut my computer off at night, stick my phone in a drawer, and pull out my journal. When I write about my day, I inevitably start coming up with plans for the next books in the series, which I can then add to my planning documents when I turn my computer on again.

My journal is a bit chaotic because of this, but I have a pretty good working memory and physically writing it down cements it in my mind.

I find that freewriting a section or two of my project is also very helpful for getting myself going when things are too tough to manage. This stuff rarely makes it into the final draft, but it gives me ideas.

Remember that millions of people have dealt with similar tragedies.

People today tend to have this idea that we are uniquely cursed: that everything we’re dealing with is entirely unprecedented, with no historical parallels. It’s easy to believe no one from the past can teach us anything because we, specifically, are far more screwed than they ever were.

But is that true?

The Little Ice Age occurred from the mid 13th through 19th centuries, where the temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere dropped by 0.6 °C (1.1 °F). During this time, Greenland was essentially abandoned, glaciers obliterated Swiss towns, droughts and famine overtook most of Europe, and millions of people died from starvation.

In fact, the Little Ice Age is part of the reason the Ming Dynasty collapsed in China, and it contributed to the French Revolution due to mass social unrest caused by famine.

So, like us, these societies were dealing with catastrophic climate change, social upheaval, and massive inequality. But the thing is that these societies did not have climatology, global news networks, or historical precedent to lean on. In fact, they were way worse off than we are today. At least we know what’s happening and can prepare for it.

But throughout all of history, people have lived their ordinary lives in extraordinary times. They have made friends, fallen in love, gotten degrees, raised children, and created beautiful art. They have continued to write, even if these things were never published, and they persisted through horrors we cannot even imagine.

Whenever I have been scared or in pain, I have been comforted by the fact that I am not uniquely unlucky. Nothing I experience or feel is entirely novel; someone else out there has felt exactly the same way.

It’s my duty, then, to translate these experiences through my work so that others, too, know that someone can understand what they are going through. Even if I am not one of the lucky ones who sees the end of an oppressive regime, I will have created a permanent record that, hopefully, will resonate with others in the future.

Harness your feelings for your art.

I started writing The Eirenic Verses because of the Palestinian genocide. One who did not know why I started writing it would never connect the dots; that’s on purpose. I don’t want the series to capitalize on real peoples’ suffering.

My feelings about these tragic, grotesque, senseless events are unimportant. I am not, and never will be, centered in these conversations, so I won’t discuss my experience in depth or demand pity points for being sad.

Palestinian voices are what matter. You can, and should, and must read books by Palestinian authors.

Still, I am a human being who feels deeply, and I needed something to express that hurt without just screaming my head off all day.

Through my writing, I could process these feelings and explore how such tragedies happen. I could create a triumphant ending for an oppressed people who are finally able to vindicate themselves. It empowered me to engage with these ugly, angry feelings while still making whatever real-world efforts I could to help.

I’m not saying you have to write politically charged fiction if you don’t want to. However, you might find that it’s helpful to take whatever you’re feeling about current events and find a way to infuse it in your work.

Writing cannot replace real-world activism, but it can keep your empathy strong and find meaning in needless suffering. It gives you an outlet for these feelings so that you can avoid getting trapped in doom cycles.

Find things to be happy about every day.

Lastly, I ask you to focus on the small miracles. Set aside your writing and spend a few minutes reflecting on everything good that happened today.

Much as we like to think everything is doom and gloom, there are always good things happening around us. It’s easy to dismiss them, claiming that they mean nothing in the face of everything wrong.

That’s not true. Good things do not need to overshadow tragedies. In fact, small treasures are even more valuable when surrounded by trash; we must work harder to find them, and thus we appreciate them more.

So, before you go to bed, lie down and think about everything that went right today, no matter how miniscule it may seem. Don’t tell yourself that they don’t matter. When you start minimizing the good things, pull yourself back and really feel the happiness that comes from those little moments.

For me, it might be that I ate my favorite dessert or snuggled with my dog. I might have really busted my ass at the climbing gym, doing a new route I couldn’t have managed a few months ago. I could have read a great book. My blankets might have felt especially warm on a cold morning. Maybe someone said something really nice to me or made me feel valued in a small way, like my brother airing up my tires.

As I said before, fascism feeds on fear. Its success depends on demoralization and anxiety. Oppressive regimes are a magic trick that rely on us, the people, being fooled.

This doesn’t mean that the real-world harm imposed by dictatorships is fake, nor that it doesn’t have material consequences for vulnerable people. But long-term regimes rely on compliance. That is achieved by making people feel that nothing is worthwhile, everything is awful, and only submission will save you. Your enemies will do anything they can to overwhelm you with bad news, attacking multiple things at a time, so you’re so tired and stressed out that you can’t fight back.

Nurture your positivity. Rest. Protect your peace. Connect with others in your community. Remember that you are not alone. Reflect on humanity’s incredible resilience throughout the generations that has given us the miracle of existence. Be proud of your strengths.

And, when you’re ready, pick up your pen again and make something beautiful.