Have you ever watched the Steve Martin movie, Roxanne? There’s a scene where Martin’s character, a fire chief, ambles by an old-fashioned metal box dispenser of newspapers. He deposits a coin, pulls out a paper, reads the headlines, then screams. He inserts another coin, tosses the same paper back into the box then skips off.

            Except for the skipping off part, this is how I feel about today’s headlines. My neighbors have seen me walk down our driveway, pick up the New York Times, read the front page, shout naughty words, and slam the mailbox with the folded paper.

The world is in flames, and I care deeply about the many people who are affected by the conflagration. Some days it’s hard enough to function, let alone keep writing, but I persevere. Call me delusional but I believe I’m called to write. Quitting is not an option for me. My intention is to bring beauty and laughter into the world. Whether I succeed in that venture is another matter, but down in my bones, I’m convinced I’m called to try.

            Here’s what is helping me stay in the game:

            When gloomy headlines dampen inspiration, rain or shine, I take a vigorous walk. While doing so, I keep my mind word-free from external sources.  I don’t listen to music with lyrics. I don’t listen to podcasts. And I most certainly do not listen to news or commentary.

As I walk, I hold out an open bucket to catch any words the universe may fling down. I record thoughts on my phone or scribble them in a small notebook. I don’t self-censor. Anything goes. On one walk, I heard the words “butt up.”  By the time I arrived home, those two words had given rise to an entire short story called Gravity which appeared in Across the Margin a few months later.

            If the morning news impairs my ability to tackle a work that is already in progress, I’ll play music while I swim laps or use an elliptical trainer. I’m sure a treadmill would work too, but I don’t like the connotation of being on a treadmill. I choose pieces that lean me away from angst and toward hope, like Amos Lee’s Worry No More, or Joy Oladokun’s Look Up. I’m about 140 pages into writing a novel. Mood-boosting songs have facilitated my receiving ideas for whole chapters for the novel. The downside?  The stacks of yellow-lined writing pads I’ve drenched by stepping out of the pool to jot ideas.

            On the mornings when I feel utterly depleted, I drag myself to Zumba class at the local gym. Our Zumba instructor often blasts Rhythm and Blues tunes. These songs include long riffs where sass-walking is not only encouraged but celebrated. After class one day, a fellow student told me that I was the best sass-walker in the class. Her unsolicited praise have kept my spirits high for weeks. In fact, now as I write these words, I feel a surge of pride.

For me, sass-walking with a bunch of other sass-walkers is empowering. Dancing in my Zumba class gives me the bad-ass energy I need to face both a world on fire and the blinking cursor on my laptop’s blank screen.

            Doubters may say my techniques constitute rearranging deck chairs on a sinking Titanic. I would counter that cliché with my own: Don’t knock it until you try it.

            Redemption is derived from the Latin word redemptio, which means taking back. These suggestions are proactive ways to redeem the godawful situation in which we find ourselves, to change and redirect our emotions, which in turn enables us to keep writing and keep fighting.  We can use this redeemed energy to create characters, scenes, dialogue, storylines, and narrative tension in our fiction writing. (In Darkness, As in Light).  Or we can use non-fiction to express ideas about how to resist the darkness in persuasive essays (Deconstructing Unicorns and Mermaids), (Maison Magique).

            My hope for all of us, writers or not, is that we can be brave, take back the dark days and muster the energy to sass-walk ourselves through these troubled times.

This essay has just appeared in Medium.

(Photo courtesy of Benjamin Wedemeyer.)

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