Creating? In This Economy?

If you follow U.S. news, you probably know that we’re not doing so hot.

Where to begin? An unelected billionaire with countless conflicts of interest is taking a chainsaw to essential government services. The President is starting trade wars and destroying relationships with the country’s allies. There’s a constitutional crisis, maybe??

Even when (if?) a different administration takes office someday, there’s no guarantee there will be much of our system of government left to salvage. The U.S. government often does bad things, of course — I have plenty to criticize about both major political parties. But this current playbook, of attacking the mechanism by which the government itself functions, feels like a speedrun toward societal and economic collapse that will devastate the most vulnerable and negatively affect everyone except for billionaires.

So I haven’t written much lately.

My creative output feels like such a piddly little issue in these times that I feel embarrassed complaining about it. Even in my own personal life, there are much more urgent threats caused by the current political moment. But my inability to work on my science fiction novel-in-progress feels like a microcosm of how difficult it is to live in such uncertain times, because all of us, whether creatives or not, thrive when we can imagine a path to something better.

My novel is set 100 years in the future, but in my hubris, I began my first draft assuming roughly the same political situation in America that we had last year. Sure, the government is full of neoliberal hypercapitalists, and sure, billionaires have a little too much influence, and sure, our efforts to combat climate change are nibbling around the edges of the problem at best, and we have to push back against all of that. But there will always be a fully functioning civil service, right?

RIGHT???

It’s not just that despairing about the state of the world stifles creativity (which is true). It’s that I don’t know how to imagine a future for my story when the trajectory of our real-life future seems so uncertain.

But these last couple of weeks, I’ve started opening my document again. I’ve started outlining a new political future a century from now: one where oligarchs have fallen from grace, one that grapples with what to do when it’s too late to save our planet from climate change, one that has its own dark side. One that might still become the utopian world we all dream of with a lot of work and struggle.

I don’t know what the future holds. But as I get used to how quickly things are devolving in America, as I accept the uncertainty of the current moment, I’m starting to be able to imagine again.

And now, on to some fun stuff.

Watch It Early!

My latest YouTube video will be up in three days’ time, but you get to see it before anyone else!

Ever since Russell T. Davies returned as the showrunner of Doctor Who in 2023, I’ve been reviewing every episode of the show on TikTok. With the next season of the show slated to release in April, I thought it would be a perfect time to revisit and re-edit all those reviews, plus some bonus content, into a retrospective of the era so far on YouTube!

What I Read This Month

I’m in the middle of a lot of books at the moment, but I completed one book recently that cemented its series as one of my favorites!

A Monsoon Rising by Thea Guanzon

As I’ve written before, I’m picky about romantasy, and I often find that middle books in a trilogy have pacing issues. However, A Monsoon Rising, which is the sequel to Thea Guanzon’s The Hurricane Wars, was a super enjoyable read that kept me flying through the pages! The only drawback is that now I have to wait for the finale to find out what happens next 😢 

For my full thoughts, read my full review of A Monsoon Rising on Storygraph.

In Case You Missed It …

In which I round up my other favorite fun posts that I made this past month! This month was a little lighter than usual because all my free time went to editing my mammoth Doctor Who review video, but I’m still very pleased with the posts I did share.

On Instagram, I helped reveal the cover for one of my most anticipated reads of 2025: An Ocean Apart by Jill Tew!

On Instagram and TikTok, I posted a short preview version of last month’s video essay about the movie Arrival and the book it’s based on:

And finally, on Instagram, I rescued a video from my TikTok about whether it’s possible to send messages faster than the speed of light, like many science fiction books portray:

Thank you so much for reading! Until next time, bookish friends.

Love,

Ellie