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Pandemic Thoughts: Think Before You Write

“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.

The pandemic slowdown grants us time to think before we pick up a pen

Why writers write: “It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.” – Ernest Hemingway

What I’m Reading: GO: A Memoir About Binge-drinking, Self-hatred, and Finding Happiness by Jessica Bell

My Amazon and Goodreads review of GO: A Memoir about Binge-drinking, Self-hatred, and Finding Happiness by Jessica Bell (Rating 5) – The Healing Power of Creativity. Jessica Bell’s memoir is a straightforward story of a young woman’s journey from alienation to self-acceptance. She tries to connect with family and peers, while seeing herself as a disconnected and divided soul. Her struggles with alcohol, and her mother’s parallel fight to overcome drug addiction, are told in stark, often painful incidents. Ultimately, this book is about the healing power of creativity. Through making art, fiction, and above all music, Bell defies despair and builds a satisfying life that gives her a cohesive identity. As an artist and writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), this book resonated with me, but it speaks to anyone who yearns to discover their own form of expression and make peace with their soul.

GO by Jessica Bell marches from darkness to light

Why writers read: “We ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for?” – Franz Kafka

Pandemic Thoughts: Write Chaos, Not Calm

“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.

Why writers write: “The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.” – Andre Gide

Pandemic Thoughts: The Agoraphobic Writer

“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.

Why writers write: “A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it is to be God.” – Sidney Sheldon

“Fido’s Lament” Online at 50 Give or Take

Bark (definition): A short, sudden laugh. My fifty-word story “Fido’s Lament” is now online at 50 Give or Take, 50-word stories published daily by Vine Leaves Press. Subscribers get a story in their email inbox every day. Read this one and bark (or indulge in a long, leisurely chuckle). To subscribe and/or submit your own story — both are free — go to 50 Give or Take. Everyone is welcome.

50 Give or Take: A story in your inbox every day. Subscribe, read, submit!

Why writers write: “Because somewhere out there is someone who needs that story.” – Neil Gaiman

Novel-in-Progress: The Sister Knot

The Sister Knot, my novel-in-progress, progresses today with the help of coffee sipped from my new progressive mug. The novel, about a fraught but resilient female friendship that endures despite the damage of childhood trauma, is told from the alternating perspectives of Liane and Frima, World War Two orphans who survive on Berlin’s streets through cunning, theft, and prostitution. Brought to the United States by a Jewish refugee agency, their lives soon diverge when Frima is adopted and Liane is sent to a group home. The novel follows their seesawing relationship through school and work, marriage and motherhood, incarceration and death. As Liane says, “how people turn out is not always the way you’d predict.” Read about my published books in NOVELS.

“Without my morning coffee, I’m just like a dried up piece of roast goat.”– Johann Sebastian Bach

Pandemic Thoughts: Can Writing Answer the Question?

“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.

Why writers write: “A word is never the destination, merely a signpost in its general direction, and that destination owes quite as much to the reader as to the writer.” – John Fowles

What I’m Reading: Grace and Serenity by Annalisa Crawford

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Grace and Serenity by Annalisa Crawford (Rating 5) – Honest and Unapologetic. Kafka said, “We ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn’t shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it?” Grace and Serenity, by Annalisa Crawford, meets that criterion. The novel’s ironic title is derived from its young protagonist and the name she gives her daughter, but the unlucky character finds neither. Her life is a bleak chain of curtailed dreams, domestic violence, homelessness, and hopelessness. Crawford nails the details of how abusive partners behave: the sudden bursts of cruelty, followed by protestations of remorse and gifts to make amends. She evokes an indelible image of flowers that haven’t even wilted before her husband’s next volcanic rage erupts. As a writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I appreciated Crawford’s unblinking courage in tackling a difficult subject. Grace and Serenity is a painful and difficult book to read, but the author’s honest and unapologetic writing will earn readers’ trust and propel them to the inevitable end.

Why writers read: “To find words for what we already know.” – Alberto Manguel

Pandemic Thoughts: Writing About Anything But

“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.

Why writers write: “A word after a word after a word is power.” – Margaret Atwood

Pandemic Thoughts: Writer-In-Waiting

“‘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.