Some days I miss being a reporter. I've never reported in a paid capacity, but I wrote for the city desk at my college paper a long time ago. There's a power in the label of 'reporter'. It gives you a role in the unfolding of events: you ask questions and weigh answers and do your best to find out what's true and get the truth across. When you work as a reporter you have closed a circuit between observation and action. When something happens, you have something to do. You're not just a witness.

I used to think about it that way. "Just a witness." On some level I used to understand that word, witness, as a passive one.

On Wednesday in Minneapolis an ICE agent shot and killed a woman named Renée Good. Last weekend, the United States attacked Venezuala and abducted that country’s president. I'm not a reporter, I don't have the deep facts to share; I know what a guy can know if he reads other people's reporting and sits with it a while, in between caring for a kid and a sick partner and trying to do his own work.

To know of these things and all the rest brings an obligation to bear witness.

The 'bear' part is the part I didn't understand when I was younger; by 'younger' I mean, maybe, this time last year. To bear witness not passive, and it's a bit different from 'to view'. (We may bear witness without viewing; it may be easier, since 'viewing' invites us into the weird and bounded role of audience, scroller, content consumer.) To bear witness is to endure what we have come to know, let it change us, and act on that change. That doesn't always mean 'write about it'; I often don't, unless I feel I have some deeper knowledge or perspective to offer, or unless the dam breaks. I try to make this place in your inbox a kind of last homely house on the internet, to offer the kind of rest I often feel I need, and imagine you do too. Maybe that's a kind of pride, a misplaced humility. I don't know. But there are many forms of change, and action.

You've probably heard the figure passed around, that no regime can endure the concerted protest of 3.5% of its population. In On Political Action Michael Walzer points out that any mass movement requires the effort and contribution of normal people - people who can't dedicate their entire lives to the cause, who can't drop everything and pitch a tent on the State House lawn tonight, but can and will give an evening, a few hours a week, a phone call, when reminded that this is something they can do that matters. The equation may not be linear, 10% of 35% may not equal 100% of 3.5%, but who knows whether the real relationship breaks for us or against us? 10% of 30% may be much larger than it seems, and what's required may be much less than 100% of 3%. In this time of New Year's Resolutions, when we so often compare our present broken selves to some perfected alternate, it's important to remember that the increase from zero to one is a sense infinite, that the increase from one to two is double. All those ones and twos add up.

There is so much darkness, but the sun's rising earlier every day, setting later. You feel it, in the north: minutes clawed back at either end.

We don't have to live this way. It can be otherwise. The work to that end lies within our power. The door is open.

Happy new year.

I am writing a novel now, after a long time in screenplay land, a long time revising. It's exciting to be alone with the page. It feels fresh. The book gets to be where my heart lives now, rather than the place it sneaks off to in odd hours, in days snatched between deadlines. I'm going into the dark forest for a bit to dwell with the creatures and powers of that place. It's not Apollo country, with clear ideas and analysis and considered structure, neatly crossed wants and needs, a sense of how things should go, or heaven help us a beat sheet. These letters might get weirder as I try to write from the dark forest. Then again they might not. Or I might be the only one who sees the difference. It don't know how to write about this part of my writing process, which I've never consciously approached in quite this way before, and maybe I won't write about it much: I'm trying not to spend time looking at my feet as I dance. But my daylight brain, planning/evaluating/worrybrain is overdeveloped and overclocked these days and scheming nighttime nightmarebrain needs more rein, more room, so: here we go.

It feels good so far. Scary, loamy, fresh. I have over fifteen years of work to bring together - the story knows what it wants, and so do the characters. The challenge is to keep up.

We are once again coming up on the 'silly season' of nominations for the Hugo and Nebula awards and all the rest. I honestly forget if I'm too late to remind folks about my own eligibility for things. In the hope that I'm not, here goes:

Dead Hand Rule came out last year, and is eligible for Best Novel.

The Craft Wars are eligible for Best Series.

This newsletter is eligible for best related work and I believe I am eligible as a fan writer, though maybe not.

I am doing a few appearances more appearances this year than last. More on these as details cohere. For now I can say that I will be at Arisia in Boston for a bit over MLK weekend, likely Saturday afternoon / evening and perhaps Sunday as well, so if you're in town, come say hi.

And that's what I have for now. I hope the holiday brought you some joy and love and strength, as it brought me. Take care of yourselves. Read books, they're good. (Recent standouts for me: Al Ewing's Immortal Hulk, Tom King's Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, Robert Jackson Bennett's A Drop of Corruption.)

Work for the liberation of all sentient beings.

See you next week.