New to Social Distancing? Welcome to the Writer’s World

I snuck into my bedroom to write this. When the muse calls, I must answer, only coronavirus has made serving the muse so much harder.

My husband works for Zoom, a company always one step ahead of the game, and since much of their engineering team is in China, they switched to a work at home policy for their HQ employees in San Jose, CA, weeks ago, and he’s been here ever since. Good for him, good for the world, not so good for the writer’s life. I haven’t written a single piece of original writing since. Hell, I even had a hard time working on the cover copy for my next novel. My editor sent her first draft to me and it took me a whole day to get to it. Finding time to think, go deep, and enter the world of my characters is almost impossible with others in the house.

And with the arrival of my college-aged sons, it’s about to get worse. Their universities are moving online and we’re rationing desks. Since the muse seems to have socially distanced herself from me as well, my eldest will inhabit my office for two weeks.

Yes, this is complaining, but not, “I hate coronavirus” complaining. It’s just dawning on me that as the world shifts to work from home and properly takes social distancing seriously, those of us who write full time actually move away from social distancing. There will be more people in my house at one time than have been in seven years. The place is suddenly noisy, like it was when the kids were little. My office isn’t mine. My husband has entered this room twice already as I try to write. I feel like a druggie trying to take a hit while mom is busy cooking dinner.

Writing has always felt a bit like having an affair. For years I did it in the shadows of the family rhythms, programming myself to channel the muse from 9-12 before other work (I’ve been a teacher both full and part time off and on since 2003), while the house was empty. I wrote three novels that way. During 2015, I had the luxury of writing full time, and channeled an entire trilogy as I wrote from 9-4. But the moment the children were home, I turned away from the writing, no matter where I was in the story, and tending to the household.

Since October 2019, the month Origins, my latest novel was published, I’ve had the luxury of being a full-time writer. My children are both in college and husband has a job that keeps him from the house 7-7 every day. Writing full time has allowed me to increase readership for the Song of the King’s Heart trilogy, finish and pitch a new novel to my publisher, and begin a brand new novel in a totally new genre for me. In addition, it’s been very socially distancing. With no children drawing me out of the house to see their performances, or teaching gigs forcing me to interact with society, I’ve become a hermit, and I’m gonna be honest, it’s sort of nice.

For those of you new to social distancing, let me give you a picture of what it’s like. On Sunday, I plan the meals for the week. On Monday I do all my errands in town. I don’t leave the house much otherwise, except to swim three times a week, or attend community choir on Monday (alas, gone until April) I spend time doing chores, tending to the animals and garden. And I write, even though that sometimes doesn’t quite look like writing. Often I’ve taken up other art during a project in order to open myself to new ideas, or allow a world to bake in my mind, or get to know a character. For example, I learned to play the bass guitar while writing The Song of the King’s Heart Trilogy. When I was stuck on a scene, I’d practice the instrument and soon the chapters were flowing again. For my two eHuman novels, I took up spinning and knitting as well as hiking. Even when it looked like I wasn’t writing, I was. Things were moving inside of me before they could make it to the page.

I spent two years learning to tango. The result? A reincarnation-cougar romance about, you guessed it, the tango.

And since October, I’ve been healing from an accident and swimming a fair share. Before my husband began working from home, I was 40,000 words into a new horror story. Yes, it’s frustrating be parted from it. Any writer will tell you the pain of a story asking to be written but being unable to write it. I think it’s part of the melancholy many writers feel at some point in their lives. My characters are right over there, calling my name, and I’m here, hiding in my bedroom hoping to god they’ll still be there when this is all over.

Social distancing is necessary right now because we must work together to stop the spread of the virus at this moment in time. But social distancing is always necessary for writers if we’re going to create. During this time when the number of people I’m in contact with has actually increased 75%, I too have to change my rhythms. I can’t write original work right now. Instead, I have to find other forms of art and creativity to keep the storytelling alive. Fortunately, the interior for my next novel, Blood and Chaos, is here and I’m proofing it. I’m also tackling the art of organizing 21 years of photos into a sharable Google drive, as well as creating as many photo books as I can. I plan on watching horror movies with my youngest as a form of research for my latest novel. Lastly, I’m knitting something for my mother’s birthday, which isn’t until May, but hey, what else am I going to do?

I’m catching up on life. I imagine that’s what a lot of you are going to do now as well. There are things to tend to, so let’s tend to them, with a bit of distance of course. But more than that, I recommend allowing this time to open to your creativity. Without the distractions of too many events and places to be, you can just be. No matter what your work in life, creativity is needed. Perhaps there’s a new way to do things, or a personnel problem needing to be solved. Perhaps as you move your work to Zoom and online, you will discover new ways to interact, teach, and share your lives with your students and co-workers. There are ideas all around you, take advantage of your social distancing to see them, listen to them, and curate creativity into your lives.

I see you there in the corner, Vincent, Holly, and Hadrien, characters of my latest creation. I can’t wait to see what we’ll do together once the world is back to normal…and I’m socially distanced from society once again.