Lincoln said to Harriett Beecher Stowe, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." Climate change may destroy civilization in my son's lifetime. I am trying my hardest to write the novel that will start the war against global broiling.
The odds are extremely high that I'll fail at it, but I won't fail. To write a novel takes incredible hubris. All novelists must believe what they have to say is so important and will be done so well that the world will want to read it. For this novel, I additionally have to overcome the lies that climate change is a hoax, harmless, or disputed and that doing anything to fix it is wasted effort that will cost the country jobs. Goethe said, "Against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain." Forgive my mixed metaphor, but I'm tilting against that windmill (perhaps building them). To beat this billion dollar brainwashing, my novel has to be impossible to put down, grab at the heartstrings like no other novel before it, and be incredibly persuasive without the readers realizing they've been persuaded. In other words, it has to be one of the greatest novels ever written. It will be. I have that chutzpah. I have that talent. I know that this novel will have an impact in saving the world. And, so far, as I finish each chapter, I find myself saying, "I can't believe I've written something this great. I'll never be able to write as amazing a chapter ever again in my life." And then I finish the next chapter and say the same thing. I am currently on chapter nine and each chapter has been that way. Knowing that the goal of this novel is to do something incredibly important has "raised my game" considerably. As of now, I'm this book's only reader. But I'm convinced of its power to achieve what I am trying achieve. Someday, you will be as well.
