Category: Literary Thoughts

“[During the pandemic] my older themes have been coming back into my work” (artist Eddie Martinez, The New York Times). That’s not true for me as a writer. However, I’ve always been drawn to writing about the elderly, due in part to growing up with my grandmother and also working as a Junior Red Cross volunteer at a “home for the aged and infirm” in high school. This year’s losses from COVID-19 have spurred reflections on aging and mortality. I started a new novel set in an old age home in the 1960s. Although the idea has been percolating for a while, I believe the pandemic made me choose to write this book now. Read more of my thoughts about writing at REFLECTIONS.

“When time becomes hazy and slippery, [our] focus is scattered. After a while, you gain a little clarity. Quarantine becomes a microcosm of life itself: When you come to the end of it, what would you like to be able to say you’ve done? Doing something is better than doing nothing. And a tiny bit a day, I began to write” (novelist Carolyn Parkhurst). My chronology has been the reverse. The longer the pandemic drags on, the more ambiguous the endpoint, the more effort it takes to keep going. But, because I’m a worker by nature, I continue to write every day, and the energy is self-sustaining. Read more of my thoughts about writing at REFLECTIONS.

“I’ll write to you. A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel” (Haruki Murakami, After Dark). United States Postal Service (USPS) reports that two-thirds of survey respondents say exchanging snail mail letters during the pandemic lifts their spirits. Although electronic communication is faster, the slowness of letter writing makes it more reflective and purposeful. USPS is of course promoting its paid services, but their snail mail advice is nevertheless valid. As a writer, I compose email letters as slowly and thoughtfully as my snail mail letters in pre-internet days. Perhaps more so, because I can revise email letters before hitting “Send,” just as I revise manuscripts before I click “Submit.” Long-form letter writing is an art worth preserving, a form of epistolary literature. Read more of my thoughts about writing at REFLECTIONS.

“I’ve been watching the Apple TV series ‘Dickinson.’ Emily Dickinson spent so much of her life writing poetry in isolation, and as a young poetess quarantining I connect with it” (Amanda Gorman, The New York Times). Writers self-isolate by choice. We don’t need a pandemic-imposed quarantine to sit alone, reflect, and (re)arrange words. Gorman’s talents will continue to bloom after the pandemic withers. For me, while COVID-19 has limited in-person connections during the hours I don’t write, most of my day is otherwise unchanged. As before, I spend the time with myself, writing. Read more of my thoughts about writing at REFLECTIONS.

Fiction writers are plagued by the “sagging middle” when a story’s momentum wanes midway. A Google search on craft articles yields about 82 million hits for writing beginnings, 18 million hits for endings, 5 million for middles, and fewer than one million specifically for sagging middles. The hard-to-heal malady can be paralyzing; some writers give up. Thankfully, I’ve never faced this problem with a manuscript, but it’s how I feel midway through the COVID-19 pandemic. In the beginning, I was actively engaged adapting my daily life. When vaccines soon emerged, I was optimistic that the ending was foreseeable too. But as the pandemic drags on and people await vaccinations in a high demand-low supply world, I’m treading in a pool of inertia. A time will arrive when the manuscript of normalcy is retrieved from the drawer, but until then, I and others like me will dwell in the sagging middle. Read more of my thoughts about writing at REFLECTIONS.

Asked about the difficulty of writing during the pandemic, David Lynch replied “If you have a habit pattern, the more conscious part of your mind can concentrate on your work … and the rest sort of takes care of itself in the background” (“David Lynch’s Industrious Pandemic” by Howard Fishman, The New Yorker, 02/21/2021). This observation was followed by a typical Lynchian example of a man who, hacked nearly to death during the night, gets up and proceeds with his morning routine until he finally bleeds out in the foyer after carrying in the newspaper. Minus the penchant for hemic anecdotes, my “pattern” is like Lynch’s. Being in the habit of writing every day, the pandemic is a backdrop to my daily routine. Asked if there are days when he might feel resistance to enacting his rituals, Lynch says he would write anyway out of “a sense of responsibility.” He was referring to the readers of his daily “weather report,” but I would say the responsibility is also to ourselves as writers. Having been given the gift of work I find satisfying, I feel an obligation to carry on. Writing doesn’t make the pandemic disappear, but it allows purposeful activity to coexist with it. More thoughts about writing in REFLECTIONS.

“You might think writers, longing to be permitted to sit with their own minds, would welcome the grand rupture brought by the coronavirus and its forced isolation. But, in fact, this extended isolation has been no romantic reprieve” (Writer Lydia Sviatoslavsky). Actually, I don’t mind. Perhaps that’s because I had no problem creating and valuing solitude in pre-pandemic days. Zoom is a surprisingly satisfying social link. While I miss hugs, a lot, up-close screen interactions offer an intimacy that sitting across a table doesn’t. Besides, as a writer, I always have my characters for company. For more thoughts about writing, see REFLECTIONS.

“Counterintuitive as it seems, the greatest gift we writers can offer the planet now is our contemplative practice. Our capacity to be deeply moved is what moves others. The pen is our sword but the strength to wield it comes from our willingness to listen, be changed, and bear witness” (Writer Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew). One benefit of the pandemic, for everyone, is slowing down. Staying in place forces us to stay with our thoughts. Writers should not be too quick to dash off their reactions to this strange time. Living with discomfort brings its own kind of comfort. For more thoughts about writing, see REFLECTIONS.

“I have come to approach beauty and neatness in art with skepticism. So far, the nascent literature of the coronavirus pandemic has reinforced my distrust. No one has had time to truly refine their ideas. In the shaky realm of literature, during a crisis in motion, mess and chaos are the forms that speak best to painful realities” (Writer and critic Lily Meyer). Agreed. While I prefer to record my thoughts after I’ve have some narrative distance, we also learn from experience captured in real time. However, those words have value only if they are not sugar-coated, but speak honestly about states of rawness and confusion. For more thoughts about writing, see REFLECTIONS.

“I didn’t realize the world that used to run on cars now runs on Zoom” (Writer Marilyn Crockett, age 79). Comfy in my writer’s nest and connecting with the world via Zoom, I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever want to venture forth again. I teeter on the edge of agoraphobia. Then I do my tri-weekly grocery shopping and going out seems normal once more … until, twenty-four hours later, it begins to feel weird and scary again. Apparently, what I have dubbed “coroneurosis” isn’t unique to me. For more thoughts about writing, see REFLECTIONS.