Perspective on Our Times

by R.S. Mellette

My neighbor will turn 100 years old this month. She was as old as I am now when I was born. When she was one year old, the first drive-in gas station was built, bringing the total number of gasoline-purposed buildings up to 3 in the whole country.

I think of her every time I see commercials on TV for natural gas drilling in America, where they say that—using fracking—we have 100 years of gas reserves. By the time I'm my neighbor's age, the country will be halfway out of gas. By the time someone born today is her age, we will have no gas reserves at all, so I wonder what the gas lobby is bragging about.

Why do I bring this enviro-political hot potato up in a writing blog? Because of something a Turkish acting teacher told our class at North Carolina School of the Arts 30 years ago. "Know the politics of your character," she said, and followed up with, "the politics of most American characters is none at all, which is just as telling."

And I think of Steinbeck, who was 10 years old when my neighbor was born. He told stories of families and working class individuals against the backdrop of the only economic times worse than those we are living in today.

I think of Mark Twain, who died just two years before my neighbor was born. He recorded the voices of America from his youth, when this was not a free country for many of the people who built it.

And I wonder what young Twain might live in Arizona? What Steinbeck might now be on the road to a North Dakota oil boomtown? For the first time in world history, we have to change our economy from a high-density fuel source (fossil fuels) to a lower one (hydrogen, solar, wind). Will we have a writer to take us through this change the way Charles Dickens (died 42 years before my neighbor was born) took us from wood to coal, or Upton Sinclair (34 when my neighbor was born) from coal to oil?

Sure, you might not write about these world changing events, but if your stories are contemporary, they should be included. They play in the background. They are the undertow to the waves your characters face. And we, as authors, owe it to our society to record their effects.

We writers are all Tom Joad. He promised to "be there" and so should we.

R.S. Mellette is an experienced screenwriter, actor, director, and novelist. You can find him at the Dances With Films festival blog, and on Twitter, or read him in the Spring Fevers anthology.

What Do You Say...?

By R.S. Mellette

There's something missing in the literary world that is prevalent in the performing arts. That is a unique way to wish an artist good luck.

For various reasons theatre, dance, and opera all have their special way of wishing someone good luck—or, because it is bad luck to wish someone good luck, wishing them bad luck as a way of fooling the Fates.

In theatre, we say "break a leg." There are a thousand stories about the origin of the saying, so take your pick as to which one you like.

In ballet, they say "merde," which is French for "shit." Having known my fair share of dancers, I'm surprised they don't say "chienne." God knows they call each other bitches enough during rehearsals.

In opera, Wikipedia tells me that they say "Toi, Toi, Toi." They'll also knock wood and spit—or pretend to.

But we writers have nothing. What do we say to a fellow scribe who says, "My manuscript is going out to editors today," or "My agent is reading my next book"?

"Good luck." How lame is that? "I'll cross my fingers." What are we, twelve?

So, I'm issuing a challenge to our readers and writers everywhere. A call to arms! Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the literary world is on the hunt for our own, new tradition, our own new way of communicating to one another that we are in this fight together. We might be lone wolves in the creation of our art, but we are not alone in spirit.

So writers, write! Come up with a phrase that clearly means, "I am an author in the same hell as you, and I am wishing you well."

Some parameters:

• There should be implied history behind this saying.
• That history should have something to do with the literary world.
• It should sound old before its time.

Once found, we must make sure we use this phrase so that others might hear it and pass it on without knowing the origin, but thinking it has been a literary tradition throughout time.

Here are my two proposals: "Dante's Luck" or "May Virgil find you."

I like them because they both come from Dante's Inferno, a great literary work, and they both speak of one making their way through Hell to get to eternal paradise.

But I'm not the only writer here. What say you all? Offer up a suggestion of a phrase and why you think it should be the one to pass from generation to generation. We will know the winner when we hear it in a writer's group decades from now.