October Novel Prep Challenge

Politics is fair game although it is a contentious subject. If I were to write about today's politics, however, I would be lost because what would come out could be biased. Yes, there could be some reasonable bias as an author's right, but the balance of fact and fiction should still be fair, in my opinion. Another reason is that, no matter how far and varied our news sources, their reporting for either side of today's politics has gone down the drain by breaking all the respectable rules of journalism.

Yet, some political novels are very good and are huge successes. Off the top of my head, The Handmaid's Tale, 1984, Primary Colors, and other earlier books that only touch politics such as some of Orwell's, Dostoevsky's, and Dickens' works.

I don't think my novel for this NaNo could handle politics since it is about a person's foibles and how he affects others and himself. I wouldn't know how to insert politics in it without messing up its central idea. But then, maybe something could come up during the writing of it, as it usually does. "Politics in a work of imagination is like a pistol shot in a concert," said Stendhal, and in this novel's case it would be a huge bomb, I think...for now.

On the plus side, once this year is over, 2020 will be the star prompt for writers everywhere for all the weirdness and politics it offers. So, good luck, everyone, I hope someone among us tackles 2020 sometime.