“The arc of the moral universe,” and Other Stories Ripped from the Headlines, by Josh Stallings

 

Q: As we head into a rather big news week - do you ever write stories “ripped from the headlines”? How much do you rely on current events to fuel your work?

A: I feel I sometimes write “ripped from the headlines that are about to happen”. I wrote a short story Life Time Appointment, not long after that beer swilling rapist Brett Kavanaugh was installed on the Supreme Court, but before they overturned women's rights to bodily autonomy. It was a dark futuristic tale that came true way too fast. I wrote about sex trafficking and US domestic kidnapping and trafficking young people, forcing them into the sex trade years before 60 Minutes would touch the subject. A subject we have yet to shine a bright enough light on, and stop. Many states still look at teenage prostitutes as criminals instead of what they are, sexually abused children. The johns who pay to have sex with them are pedophiles. 

I don’t write books based on headlines, I think that should be left to South Park, no really I do. They built a way to have news on the air in a week after it hit. And they make it shamelessly funny. Podcasts can move at the speed of news. For the rest of us we need to look farther down the road. From when I have a book idea to when a reader opens it will be a year or more at best. For that reason books need to have a longer shelf life than a cartoon or true crime podcast.

Sometimes you get lucky. Don Winslow’s The Cartel was published in June 2015. In July 2015 Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, broke out of a maximum security prison. For two weeks every news or newser-taiment show grabbed Winslow up as the expert to talk about Mexican Cartels. Rightfully so, he is an expert on Cartels. The book took years to research and write so he had no way of knowing this exposure was coming or that it would launch The Cartel sales into the stratosphere. It is an amazing book and it got lucky.

The second part of the question is, “How much do you rely on current events to fuel your work?” I try to avoid writing about current events. I write from a world view that is informed by my personal history. Conversations with friends and acquaintances. Once into a novel I interview people connected with the world I write about. I follow current events from multiple sources. Lately I find myself looking to history to understand the world we are living through. 

Follow me down this rabbit hole… I’m writing this on election day. No results are in, but everyone agrees it’s a razor close race. How the fuck is that possible?

I searched out this quote to help me feel a tiny bit safer-

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Martin Luther King, Jr. 

In a deeper dive I discovered that King, scholar that he was, cleverly rephrased a much older quote-

“Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.” - 1853, Theodore Parker a Unitarian minister and abolitionist.

I pray to the divine universal power of nature that they are both correct.

Back to writing. I hold a romantic, non cynical world view in my heart, because if I didn’t I couldn’t go on living let alone writing. Cynicism and nihilism are afforded to those who haven’t walked through life altering pain and heartbreak. People lucky enough to never discover a time when a little hope in a better tomorrow is all that keeps the noose from around your neck. 

I have been lucky enough to love deeply. I have lost extraordinary people and animals too soon and right on time. Neither are easy. But if pain is the price of truly loving, it is a price I will continue to pay gratefully.

I write from my life and dress it in world facts. The core cannot be torn from any headline except the ones in my brain, heart, and soul.