COVID-19 and writing

Is anyone else still quarantining? I'm not doing well with it. Everything is slipping. Writing can be manic or something I ignore for days. The way I tell stories has changed because everything has changed. I would love to hear from any fellow quarantining writers. How you holding up?

 

Badly. Hard to motivate oneself since this time does not seem like one where people need literary fiction. It didn't before this, and feels like that even moreso now.

I have to self-quarantine right now but unless you live with people over 60, I think it'd be a good idea to take a trip, go to a restaurant you've never been, take a hike, just do something to break out of the monotony of these days cos it's the death of creativity.

 

I am not shielding so bearing up pretty well, lots of reading and writing. Cannot complain.

 

I'm not exactly quarantining, but my work is 99% online now so I haven't seen my coworkers since Christmas. I haven't had a face-to-face conversation with anyone other than my wife who wasn't paying or getting paid for it since mid-May (still talk to students in the couple f2f lessons I have, exchange pleasantries with the ladies at the supermarket, talk with my friend the bartender but only when I'm drinking there). Being introverted helps, but this is getting slightly tiresome.

Writing? A little, couple flash pieces here and there but I've spent most of my linguistic creative abilities trying to get online lessons ready. A thousand words a day of written lessons and quizzes and such so my creative juices are heading towards things mechanical now.

 

The pandemic put a wet blanket on everything. I am ok, my family is ok. I don’t swim twice a week and a lot of small things are not anymore. But for three months I have not felt like doing anything. I have read some books but not written anything. But in the last month I have started doing things again. Small things.

Then comes this competition. A Sci-Fi club in Sweden (they are very serious) announces a competition. The corona isolation is a good time to write a short story. They have picture prompts and a limit of 6144 words (no idea what that comes from).

I love Sci-Fi so I had this plan that someday I will write something. But before that I need to practice so I write small stuff that usually ends up with relationship/romance, though I managed to produce one crime story.

I start out BIG, intergalactic theft of 312 ton iridium, FTL ships/worm holes. My MC works for the Intergalactic Trade Confederation on the planeten Marsan, Q7:Sb22173:05. Of course quarantine regulations will be specific between planets and so on.

I have some ideas about the story and a twist for the end. But I can’t do it. How should I convince a reader when I can’t convince myself? There will never be FTL-ships.

So I back down, maybe 100 years from now, still on earth. I try to keep my plot (that wasn’t that detailed) but as I write of course there is a romance developing between my MC and the female police. Of course there is talk about perfume, intimate lighting, small touches etc. And of course in the last sentence they kiss.

Will I ever learn?

Keep writing, all of you.

 

Yes, this. My MS is not necessarily literary (I'd love to say it was; I'd peg it more upmarket), but it's not genre and not commercial and not escapist. I've paused my querying efforts because I just don't think it will resonate right now. I've been mentally outlining MS#2, but haven't starting writing. I am working on a short creative non-fiction piece that I'm editing now. Small bites easier to swallow...

 

I made some small edits to a short story that's about to get published, just ahead of the publication deadline. But beyond that, I haven't written anything significant in months. Even that wasn't significant, but it was writing (an entire paragraph!).

Have you considered that 100 years from now, we might have colonies on the moon and Mars, plus one or two civilian-inhabited space stations of reasonable size? Those offworld colonies would want to quarantine from Earth, where disease vectors rage, but still need supplies from there. Play with that and see what you come up with.

 

No longer quarantining, but i actually miss it, to be honest.
I hated it while it was happening, because i missed people (like people in general...home for me is myself and my pets... Husband is home rarely because of work stuff.... So it was very lonely)
But now that im back at work, i miss having all of that quarantine time to write guilt/exhaustion free.
When i get home, im tired and dont feel like writing. When i do fee like writing, i feel guilty because i need to go to sleep to get ready for work in the morning. Its like i forgot how to balance my work/writing schedule.

Anyway, i guess im saving up my writing workload for the next disaster

 

Not really quarantining any more, but I still get groceries delivered and do curbside pickup whenever I can. I'm only working part-time, which is all online, and I haven't socialized in person with anyone I don't live with since mid-March. Mr. Kelly had to go back to his workplace last week after working from home since April, and my daughter went back to waitressing but understandably is getting few hours. She graduated from college in May, but the job market in her field really sucks right now.

Writing-wise, being unexpectedly unemployed during a pandemic killed any desire I had to write. It also seemed rather pointless to work on writing a sequel to a book no longer in print. Last month I finally pulled my head out of my butt and self-published my backlist, which has led to me finally getting back to tinkering with the sequel to UTK again.

 

Yo

I know this feeling all too well!

I probably did not put in that much more work when I had entire days with nothing to do than I did while working 12 hour days. I think the advantage of working is it gets you out of the bed/out of the house and gets your mind going. With months of lock down as well as jobs in the past with long vacations, I almost immediately fell into depression and despondency when I did not have an obligation to get out of bed.

This is somewhat childish, I suppose, but having more time does not always equal more work. It also means more time to ruminate and fall into depressive thinking traps. More time spent wrestling with the cookie jar. More time to drink coffee until you cannot think straight. Nobody to stop you taking a nap whenever you feel like it. And well, this isn't exactly news to me, but I lack passion and drive to just write whatever the hell mood I'm in.

 

Good for you! In this age of e-publishing, nothing should be out of "print." Makes me furious when I look for a book I've heard of or remembered only to find that it's outright unavailable or worse, there's a used paperback copy that someone wants $150 for...

 

Unfortunately, I don't see my time in lockdown ending anytime soon. I don't really want to get into the specifics, but knowing there's possibly still a long way to go is getting harder to deal with. And pretty much all my friends where I am are still quarantining so there's no one to see. Most of them are writers, too. We promise to send each other chapters but never do. I'm sick of the maddening stillness. I have managed to sell three different personal essays on quarantining. Looks like I've really mastered this shut-in lifestyle.

 

It is becoming the 'new normal,' isn't it?

 

To some extent, that's what happened to me when I retired over 10 years ago. I thought OH GOODY now I can WRITE without interference. And guess what? I stopped writing. I didn't stay in bed, but I stopped doing stuff on a schedule because the days stretched before me, unbroken, and I didn't have to rush to get things done. So I sorta stopped doing things. I wasn't depressed, just lazy. So the Covid lockdown just feels like more of the same, with fewer conveniences available. My husband says the same thing. Bizarre.

 

I wouldn't have thought so, but yes. Maybe not for everybody, but certainly for me. It used to be a dream of mine to NOT have to fit my writing around my work schedule. I thought I'd end up writing many hours every day, as I did while I was working but had days off, etc. That's not quite how it worked out. Retirement time isn't the only factor in the downturn of my writing, but it is a factor. No doubt about it. And I imagine the Covid thing (coupled with worry associated WITH the Covid thing and the inevitability of social changes) will impact on creativity quite a bit.

 

When the Covid thing first hit, like many, I was hit with a wave of malaise that lasted for months. Luckily my job continued (I've been saying for years I could do my job remote and be 100% effective; this proves it), but things were so weird that I couldn't find the energy to write. Now I've settled into the "new normal" and the malaise is gone. But work is so busy it's sucking the creativity out of me. Combine that with the fact that, due to not being able to go anywhere on an airplane, we bought an RV and have spent weeks outfitting it. Also, we've been renovating the back yard, and are rushing to get it finished before our new basement-apartment tenant moves in on Monday. I can't even think of writing, and I want desperately to have that creative outlet.

 

How about 5 minutes a day?

 

Yeah, when I worked full time I had a lot of resentment about work taking me away from my dreams/passions so flogging myself with an imaginary stick to get that 30 minutes/hour a day in felt like an active fight !

When work is gone, I lose that energy and drive completely. I seem to stop caring about pretty much anything.

Having said that, in lockdown I have written 6 completely new stories, attempting my first effort shorts in s/f/horror/fantasy. I have written 3 totally new personal essays and edited two older stories (massively improving them both).

I recorded 10 completely new songs and uploaded them to my soundcloud, getting pretty good feedback on them.

I have had an article shared by a website that actually paid me. So all in all...it's been pretty productive. Lost my job, my girlfriend, my ability to perform stand up. Lost pretty much everything.

Now I have just moved back to the UK and am living in a state of dependence on my family, which I feel very strangely about. This idea I was an individual and independent was one of the last things I had for my self-esteem, and now I've let that go albeit by choice.

When I'm down about it all, I always remember what Phillip Roth said - 'whatever doesn't kill you makes you a better writer.'

 

Well, very good luck to you. That's a lot to be hit with at once, but you're turning it around. And you are definitely NOT alone. So many people don't see what the future is going to hold for them right now. You're showing flexibility and a willingness to carry on ...and those two attributes will get you a long way. But don't feel bad about feeling bad just now. This situation is not your fault. Just one of life's kickintheteeth moments.

 

Yeah, you're staying busy busy, but not creatively busy. I think this time will pass, eventually. I was reading the other day that people who are working from home are actually working MORE hours than they did before. A friend of mine is in that position, and she said she's afraid to walk away from her computer, for fear she's going to get 'called' to do something. She's finding this very stressful.

 

I've heard mixed reactions about fiction regarding Covid 19. As soon as the pandemic hit, apparently people were split into two categories: those who started looking for all sorts of fiction related to pandemics, apocalypse, and whatnot and those who avoided it like the plague [pun intended]. I imagine your editor was targeting the former group (which could be bigger than the latter, I don't know).

I fell into the first group and realized I had one of the greatest works of fiction that has to do with the topic, Stephen Kings' The Stand. I really enjoyed it, and I found that in general Covid does create a lot of fodder for creative writing. It is still a very sensitive topic, however. So I'm very curious about how people react to fiction that tries to deal with the topic.

As a matter of fact, I wrote a short story that tries to do just that and shared it in last month's competition. With the entries from the competition, I also realized how escapism plays a big role in fiction. A great deal of reader satisfaction comes from avoiding reality and living situations which we cannot live. My story, however, is real (too real, some perhaps would argue). This is a challenge other pieces that try to use Covid as part of the narrative might face. I'm curious to see how people might see it.

This is the link, for those who are interested:
https://www.writingforums.org/threads/for-the-enemy-3-061.166671/