Socially Engaged Fiction: finding my voice as a writer & book coach

Dear Vi,

I started my book coaching business in 2022 after getting certified with Author Accelerator in a very robust program–read it here: The long, hard road to becoming a practicing book coach. I started the business working as a revision coach for writers looking to fix their drafts. I did it very safely. I didn’t really put myself out there, and instead told myself that I was satisfied with the bits and bobs of work and the one long-term client that came my way.

I knew I was standing in my own way, but starting a small business as an “encore career” as an older woman over the age of 60 was terrifying. I needed an expert to ask me the right questions and help me put words to what I was experiencing. It was time to fish or cut bait.

Which is why I joined Krista Smith’s Activate Her Awesome academy in 2024. The other day I listened to the recording of a conversation we’d had at that time.

As I listened, I could hear the impatience I was feeling with myself two years ago. I was just beginning to recognize how tired I was of making myself small in order to feel safe.

I felt like there was something BIG inside of me, pushing to get out. But what?

Suddenly, instead of talking about business we were talking about life. About being an older woman at the very tail end of the boomer generation. About having been around the block a few times and having something to say about it. About having lost our voices and feeling invisible.

It was around this same time when I was browsing another coach’s website that I first saw it clearly. This coach was younger, in her thirties at the time, doing good work, and clearly making an effort to be inclusive. She welcomed writers of every gender, every sexuality, every race, every background you could think to list…except older women. I know it wasn’t intentional. Older women have simply ceased to have societal value.

What fell into my stomach in that moment was the realization that older women aren’t left off inclusion lists on purpose, we’re left off because we have been erased from collective consideration.

And yet, it’s the Elders, the Wise Women, the Mentors, the CRONES who carry the stories of their cultures in their bones. Or, at least they used to. I am envious, sometimes, of the Indigenous societies who still respect their Matriarchal Elders —who ask their Grandmothers for advice and value their life experiences.

After that—as you do when you become hyper-aware of something—I started seeing it everywhere.

Even the language erases us. According to the media, I am a “mid-life woman.” This is not true. In Canada, a woman’s average life expectancy is 84 years. In the US, it’s 81 years. In twenty years, I’ll be 85.

This is not “mid life.” A woman in her 40s is mid-life. The rest of us are…what? No wonder we’re all chasing youth…being young is the only way to matter in society today.

(Please don’t try to tell me that this is all semantics. Words are the tools we use to organize our political and social structures. )

What is changing for me is something I referenced in my post The Gate of Elderhood—this article is an extension of that one.

That something BIG I said I feel pushing to get out? It’s the Crone. She’s stepping through the gate, and I don’t know that I want to hold her back.

Will this have ramifications for what I do as a book coach? For myself as a writer?

Yes. Of course. It has to. How could it not?

Here’s how:

We’re living in what many scientists and scholars call the Anthropocene era, where humans have become the single most influential species on the planet, causing significant changes to land, environment, water, organisms and the atmosphere. As I age, I find myself drawn more and more toward a humanist mindset, and towards reading and writing fiction that has a social conscience. Art is, after all, political, and I feel strongly drawn to it.

I’ve come to realize that what I want with all my heart is to play a role in getting books into the world that point toward solutions so readers can actually visualize them. So they feel empowered to take action in their own real lives, not just despair at the size of the problem.

Socially engaged stories.

I believe we can write books that are entertaining—that make us laugh and cry, that we can’t put down—and that also water the seeds of change.

I believe stories are how ideas enter the world, and fiction is how they get into the groundwater.

I see myself beginning to shift in that direction when it comes to taking on new clients as a book coach, which means I have some exciting learning to do.

For instance, I’ll be digging deep into the differences between socially aware and socially engaged fiction. What they are and how they relate to the world, and the many genres that fall under these umbrellas. Utopian vs dystopian fiction; thrutopian vs solarpunk; soilpunk vs hopepunk.

It’s a brave new world out there, folks, and I am inviting you on this learning journey with me.

I don’t have it pinned down yet, and I don’t want to pretend I do, but over the coming while, I’m going to go deep: reading and defining in a way that makes sense to me and hopefully to you.

I’m going to pay attention, be astonished, and then tell you all about it.

If any of this speaks to you, I hope you’ll come along.

All my love,

Nita