If you haven’t read the post I wrote at 4 am this morning about the lawsuit recently filed that accuses authorities at a Republic, MO middle school of covering up the alleged rapes of a special needs student, please do so now.
We do not have a word in English that adequately expresses how angry I am about this.
But this is a WFMAD post. It is not the place for me to go all fire-and-brimstone on the hindquarters of adults who epically fail in their responsibilities to the children in their care.
One of the tricks to being a balanced, productive writer is to take the emotional fastballs that life hurtles toward your head and transform them into something you can use in your writing. If you want to write for teens and kids, the chances are almost 100% that you care deeply about them. This means you are going to spend a lot of time being upset at the way they are treated.
Anger, stoked in a righteous fire and smoothed with the hammer of integrity, becomes narrative energy.
Ready… Don’t take any time to be ready. Tell the people around you to leave you alone for 15 minutes. Put on head phones. Make the stupid world go away. And don’t give me any back-talk, OK?
Set… “Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth.” AND “I get angry about things, then go on and work.” both quotes from Toni Morrison
Today’s prompt: What pisses you off? What action, person, offense, crime, indignity, injustice, horror scratches your soul like a sulphur-tipped match on sandpaper? I’m not talking about the jerk who cuts you off in traffic, or a parking ticket, or a partner who leaves socks on the living room floor. I’m talking about dangerous anger. World-changing anger. Revolutionary rage.
Write about what makes you that angry. I double-dog dare you.
Extra bonus points if you get so fired up that you write about what makes your character that angry, too.
Scribble… Scribble… Scribble…