Tag: Reflections from Ann S. Epstein Writer

“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.

“Whatever the question, ‘writing’ is the answer. [But] how can little old me possibly manage something as vast as this pandemic? By writing one word after the next, the ending will appear” (Novelist Leslie Pietrzyk). I too am writing to the ending, but not to make sense of the pandemic. I simply write my way to the end of each story, much as I did before the pandemic. When the pandemic ends, I won’t have an answer for it. I’ll just continue to write. For more thoughts about writing, see REFLECTIONS.

“You never know beforehand what people are capable of, you have to give it time, it’s time that rules”(Writer José Saramago). You might think that as a writer, I’ve spent the past eleven months documenting the experience of living through the pandemic. I haven’t. You might assume that my written words lament the year’s losses. Or, conversely, extol the benefits of isolation. They don’t. I write the kinds of stories I’ve always created. Some day, with the hindsight of time, I may write about the pandemic in fiction or memoir. But at present, my writing traverses independent paths. For more thoughts about writing, see REFLECTIONS.

“‘For a while’ is a phrase whose length can’t be measured, at least by the person who’s waiting” (Haruki Murakami). We live in a winter that started last spring and will not end until this summer or fall. But spring will eventually follow winter, as it always does. And so I wait, for a while. In the meantime, I write. Not about the pandemic, but through it, tilling the fertile soil of imagination from which spring sprouts. For more thoughts about writing, see REFLECTIONS.