A Writer's Notebook, Day Six-Hundred-And-Eighty

I am quite happy with the work on the story that I am currently writing.  It is taking shape and I am becoming more and more aware of the world it is building, the events around it.  Their is a level at which it is a very strange sort of world, but one that makes sense to me, and which is not all explained, but is cohesive as well.  I think that I know the information I was needing in order to keep moving forward, and I feel myself approaching an ending soon, if not tomorrow, in a couple of days.  I still have quite a bit to relay, so I might be wrong, it may only be my sense that I know what the ending is, generally, but it is not clear all of what it will take to arrive there. 

I'm also wanting to mention something relating to an online workshop that I am enrolled in and which begins this week.  I began to receive manuscripts and read them, and have been rather upset to find that a majority are novels that involve police as the main protagonists, and I am not certain how to deal with the issues that raises.  While I have my views about police and policing, and have for a long time believed that policing in this country is often dangerous and overpowered, and the issues that are rising up at this moment seem too significant to write a book about a police officer without it being a question.  I do not mean to dictate anyone else's politics or beliefs in this, but rather to point out that the question is there, that this is an issue in our world and one that is being disguised at all levels, including in editorial and other publishing contexts.  It is certain readers are questioning these values to some extent, since these questions are all about us right now.  At the same time, it is unclear how to bring this up in ways that won't be seen as an inappropriate political attack.  But I do have to wonder about the thinking of those who would write about police being heroes at this particular moment in time.  It seems a strange choice, and one that is inherently political in the context of 2020, and what matters most to me is not that the politics line up with mine, but that it be considered a legitimate area of inquiry.

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