I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality.Like secular fantasy writers, we seldom win national literary prizes and we feel pressured to conform to publishers' commercial formulas. But we don't write for prizes or profits. As Le Guin says, we write because we are "the realists of a larger reality." We see blessed "alternatives to how we live now," and we want to write that vision. Our standard of success is how faithfully we depict that vision.
__________________
Joe Allison and his wife, Judy, live in Anderson IN, where Joe serves as Editorial Director of Discipleship Resources & Curriculum for Warner Press, Inc. Joe has several nonfiction books in print, including Swords and Whetstones: A Guide to Christian Bible Study Resources. He's currently writing a trilogy of Christian historical novels set in the Great Depression.
Visit Joe's blog at http://southernmtns.wordpress.com
This is very true and a good reminder. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteVery good point, Joe. (Hope you note a comment made this long after the post.)
ReplyDelete