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How to Be a Writer During a Pandemic

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It’s been a crazy year for writers. For some of you, it’s been a curiously productive season, despite all the challenges introduced by the pandemic. Perhaps your writing success was prompted by the change to your routine, or the self-induced pressure to make something good out of something awful. Or maybe it was that “I’m a writer…I can’t not write” thing forcing words to the page. [Is that a real thing? Or just something writers say to sound cool? It sounds oppressive to me. “I’d love to feed the kids and walk the dog and shower more than once a month, but I can’t leave the computer because my hands won’t stop typing. Someone. Help. I. Can’t. Stop. Writing…”

Whatever the reason, you did that thing writers do: you wrote. Maybe you wrote a hundred words a day. Or a thousand. Did you finish that novel you’ve been working on? Nice. Did you start another? Impressive. What? You wrote two complete novels? Now that’s just rude.

But some of you are more like me. You haven’t written much. Or at all.

Hi, my name is Stephen and I’m a charter member of the Zero Words Written Club. If you fail to write anything for more than a year, you can be a member too. There’s no cost to join, apart from an overwhelming sense of failure. We meet on Tuesdays, just after the hour you blocked out for writing that instead was filled with doom-scrolling on Twitter and rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Just look for the Zoom meeting where all of the participants have a lost, faraway look in their eyes.*

There are lots of good reasons why you may not have been able to write during the pandemic [which continues even now – please get vaccinated so we can end it]. Here are just a few. Feel free to use one when talking with writer friends from the “curiously productive” group:

  • I was sick with COVID and now my brain is in a perpetual fog.
  • Every time I try to write a scene with lots of people in it I worry that they’ll get COVID if I don’t make them wear masks and then I start to feel a little ill myself because who wants to write that?
  • I already spend so much time in front of my computer working/going to school/doom-scrolling that I can’t stand to look at it anymore and before you suggest I write my story longhand, have you seen my penmanship? Even I can’t read my own writing.
  • My kids are home 24/7. The only possible time I’d have to write is when they’re all in bed, and by then I am a brain-dead skin bag.
  • I just don’t have any motivation/inspiration/mojo to write. I mean, look… [Pause, then gesture widely, indicating everything.]
  • I forgot how to words together put order in.
  • I’ve been snacking a lot since I’m home all the time and I no longer fit in my writing chair.
  • I’m all out of words. I used them up trying unsuccessfully to convince myself to write.
  • I don’t know. I just can’t.

If in this past year you’ve written a lot of words, good for you. I mean it. That’s no small feat. If you’ve only written a few, or none at all, I’m here to celebrate you, too. You’re still breathing. You still matter. And yes, you’re still a writer. There is no daily or weekly or monthly word count requirement to remain a member in good standing of This Writing Community. Read that again if you have to.

Of course, you’ll probably want to write more words eventually just so you can feel like a writer again. But there’s no rush. You can take your own sweet time. [Unless you’re under a contract deadline. If that’s the case, well, you’re probably screwed. Buy a bigger chair and get to it.]

How can you be a writer during a pandemic? (Or during Any Time in History?) Just do the best you can with what you have. Write when you can. And don’t stress when you can’t.

Meanwhile, I’ll see some of you next Tuesday.

*To be fair, this could be just about any Zoom meeting. Just smile and nod and keep your microphone off and no one will know the difference.


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