Never Say You Can't Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories

by Charlie Jane Anders

People sometimes talk about escapist storytelling as a kind of dereliction of duty—as if we’re running away from the fight. That’s some garbage right there, because escapism is resistance. In her 1979 essay collection The Language of the Night, Ursula K. Le Guin paraphrases Tolkien: “If a soldier is captured by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?… If we value the freedom of the mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape and to take as many people with us as we can.”

Visualizing a happier, more just world is a direct assault on the forces that are trying to break your heart. As Le Guin says elsewhere, the most powerful thing you can do is imagine how things could be different … What if?

Seven words sum up a really good landing: “Nothing will ever be the same again.” A powerful work of art usually leaves you feeling like the characters, and maybe even the world, have gone through some changes, and there’s no going back to the way things were before.