What would your magic power be?

maybe we have to imagine it to believe it

I'm writing a contemporary fantasy novel where women learn to use magic to turn back the climate crisis.

I’m writing this novel because I very much want to, because it’s not too late to throw myself at my old dream, and I’m writing it because my hurting heart needs to believe we can wake up in time to save ourselves.

I started writing about creative ways to address the climate crisis after I published Why Bother?¹ and realized I had succumbed to climate despair and given up on taking regular action, something I’d been doing since high school.

But writing a climate-focused newsletter has gotten harder and harder. Despair keeps nipping at my heels. I don’t know what to say to you that is both optimistic and practical.

But I can’t quit. That would go against everything I believe which is every little voice and every little action matters. That to lose myself in despair is to let the bad guys win and I’m too much of a frickin rebel to let that happen.

Here’s what I’ve got for this month pulled from my novel:

What magical power do you wish you possessed and you could use to help the planet?

I asked this on Threads and got a bunch of fun ideas like:

It got me thinking — if we can imagine magical powers, can we also imagine change is possible?

Can we imagine a world in which oil and gas lobbyists don’t control our future?

A world economy that doesn’t exploit our psychology to sell us things that then destroy the planet?

Can we imagine making changes in our lives from a spirit of creating a better world instead of what we are missing out on or what is being taken from us?

Imagining I have magic powers got me to write this newsletter. Maybe it will get you to take a little climate action today.

My past newsletters have a ton of ideas.

I very much want to write a novel that helps readers believe in change and take action but my book won’t be done for close to a year and then I have to sell it…

We have work to do in the meantime.

Feel your magic. Believe in it. You have a powerful imagination. Use it.

Love,

Jen

P.S. Unrelated to climate change — I’m offering a free writing class called Comfort & Spark with the talented and funny

Natalie Serber

Register here. One hour, plus time for chatting afterward, all genres, all levels welcome. No upsell.

1. Apologies for the Amazon link, Bookshop.org seems to hate me