March? Please! I’ve been in self-isolation since January.
No, I was not clairvoyantly alerted to the impending coronavirus pandemic; only our dear leader can claim that pansophic distinction. Rather, my wife started a new job at the beginning of the year, necessitating a commute, thereby leaving me carless. (Voluntarily carless, I should stipulate: I refuse to be a two-vehicle household; as it is, this congenital city kid, certified tree-hugger, and avowed minimalist owns one car under protest.)
My obstinance, however, comes at a cost: I don’t live within convenient walking distance of anything save a Chevron station (the irony of which is only so amusing), so while the missus is at work, I’m effectively immobilized. I got nowhere to go… save the home office opposite my bedroom. Thusly, I made a conscious decision at the start of the year to embrace my newfound confinement as a creative opportunity—to spend the entirety of winter devoted all but exclusively to breaking the back of my new novel. I kept my socializing and climate activism to a minimum during this period, submitting to the kind of regimented hourly schedule I haven’t known since my college days.
Before long, my period of self-imposed artistic self-isolation was yielding measurable results, and I’d been looking forward to emerging from social exile. The week I’d earmarked for my “coming-out party”? You guessed it: The Ides of March.
I instead spent St. Paddy’s week mostly reeling, knocked sideways—as I imagine many were—by the speed and scale at which this crisis ballooned. But in the days that followed, I resolved to compartmentalize—to get back to work. I still had my codified daily routine, after all, which required a few adjustments and allowances under the new circumstances, and I had a project completely outlined and ready to “go to pages.” So, that’s what I turned to.
And in short order, I’d produced the first two chapters, which, for me, are always the hardest to write, because I have no narrative momentum to work with as I do in later scenes. You open a blank Scrivener document, and—BOOM!—all your careful planning and plotting, your meticulously considered character arcs and cerebral theme work? It ain’t worth shit at that ex nihilo instant. You may’ve built the world, but how do you get into it? Writing that first sentence, that first paragraph, that first scene, that first chapter is like feeling your way around in the dark. (Fittingly, my first chapter is literally about three guys finding their way through a forest path in the pitch black of night.)
“Going to pages” turned out to be just the intellectual occupation I needed to quell my anxiety, to give me a reprieve from our present reality. And now that I’ve got story momentum, slipping into the world of my fiction every morning is as easy as flicking on the television. For the three or four hours a day I withdraw to my personal paracosm, I’m not thinking about anything other than those characters and their problems. As such, I’ve thus far sat out this crisis in my study, trafficking in my daydreams to pass the time; I’m not treating patients, or bagging groceries, or delivering packages, or working the supply chain, or performing any of the vital services upholding our fragile social order. Instead, I’m playing make-believe.
It wasn’t long ago—Christmas, in fact—I’d issued an earnest, hopeful plea that in the year to come we might all forsake our comforting fictions, our private parallel dimensions, in favor of consciously reconnecting with our shared nonfictional universe. And now here many of us find ourselves, banished from the streets, from the company of others, confined by ex officio decree to our own hermetic bubbles—as of this writing, 97% of the world is under stay-at-home orders—with nowhere to retreat but our escapist fantasies. I’ve been reliant upon them, too—even grateful for them.
And that got me thinking about Stephen King’s Misery. As masterful, and faithful in plotting, as Rob Reiner’s movie adaptation (working from a screenplay by William Goldman) is to King’s book, the theme—the entire point of the narrative—gets completely lost in translation. This is a story about addiction, as only King could tell it: It’s about how drugs (in this case, prescription-grade painkillers) help us cope with misery, but it’s also about how art can be an addictive—and redemptive—coping mechanism, as well; how it can turn misery into a kind of beauty, especially for the artist himself.
If you don’t entirely recall, King’s protagonist Paul Sheldon is a bestselling author known mostly for a series of Victorian romance novels he openly disdains. He longs to be taken seriously as a writer, to compose literature worthy of his talent and ambition, and has recently killed off the main character of his Misery series, Misery Chastain, and completed the first draft of a gritty crime novel, Fast Cars. It isn’t long before Paul’s deranged captor, Annie Wilkes, forces him to destroy the only copy of the Fast Cars manuscript and commence work, under threat of withholding his meds, on Misery’s Return.
What starts as a compulsory chore—resurrecting a character he hated, whom he blamed for retarding his career—turns out to be his spiritual salvation in the months-long misery of his captivity. Though the novel is, in many respects, more sadistic than the movie, it’s oddly more uplifting in the end: Paul regains his sense of artistic purpose through the ordeal; he comes to accept himself for the writer he is, rather than the one he thought he should be. As Chili Palmer once noted, sometimes that’s when you do your best work: when you got a gun to your head.
In addition to Paul’s persistent sense of claustrophobic dread, King does a splendid job of making us feel his excruciating pain—to say nothing of how effectively King conveys the dehumanizing slavery of addiction: Every time Paul gulps down one those cockadoodie codeines, we the reader feel a vicarious flush of relief. We are trapped in that room with Paul for the duration of the novel—and, by extension, trapped in his broken body: We feel his physical agony; we experience his psychological torment; we rejoice in the opportunities to escape into Misery’s fictional world alongside him (King incorporates sample chapters from the novel-within-a-novel). Whereas the movie is a first-rate exercise in suspense, and not much more, the book is an ode to writing itself—a story about how fiction can save us from life’s unplanned (and often undeserved) miseries.
I’ve been bearing that in mind as I find my season of self-isolation indefinitely extended. Look, I won’t pretend otherwise: I miss the pub. I miss my gym. And the diner. The library. The municipal animal shelter where I volunteer. I miss the whirl and rush of humanity teeming in the streets, the very place I’ve always felt most at home. Same as you, I ache for the familiar comforts of everyday life—the absolutes I took for granted that up and vanished overnight.
While I in no way mean to minimize the adverse psychological consequences of long-term isolation—and who knows what we’re yet in for—self-seclusion can also be, I recognize now with renewed appreciation, a laboratory of creativity. There is prodigious benefit to being alone with one’s thoughts, a practice that’s fallen irretrievably out of fashion in our digital era of perpetual distraction and on-demand entertainment. Deprived of external input, we’re forced to look within—to reflect; to process. In doing so, we challenge long-held beliefs, and refine them, broadening both our creative and moral imaginations.
It’s when you’re doing nothing… that we get our great thoughts, and our great artistic ideas. You know, you get epiphanies. You’re never gonna get it when you’re being fed stuff all the time.
Roger Daltrey on The Howard Stern Show (from May 19, 2015)
And that’s what the privileged among us (present company included), during this public-health crisis, are being asked to do for the first time in a long while: nothing.
The trick, of course, is learning to do nothing mindfully, and actively—not mindlessly or passively; to reengage our imaginations from within, not without. Because the post–COVID-19 country we engineer is going to require new depths of creative thinking and moral courage—and certainly of patience, as we envision a better America and then do the sleeve-rolling work of writing the first draft of that story.
Speaking only for myself, the coronavirus quarantine is an inconvenience, not a sacrifice—a reminder that the real sacrifices required of me are yet to come, and this interval of self-isolation is the time I’ve been allotted to prepare for that. To Think Big.
For the past half decade, I’ve renounced the twentieth-century mythologies in which we’ve been interminably mired, from the exponential growth fantasies of deregulated capitalism to the demigod-worshipping of Marvel and DC Comics, in favor of allowing our nascent millennium to develop an economic ideology and cultural identity of its own; it seems hopefully possible this pandemic may end up being the paradigm-shifting event that catalyzes such overdue metamorphosis. When we get to the other side of this, how nice it’ll be to stop wishing for it and to start working on it.
And, of course, to get back to the pub. That’ll be nice, too.
“Pansophic”–from ‘pansophy’–what a great word for a bibliophile like me.
Thanks, Jacqui! As this most makes
manifestclear, I’ve had an abundance of time peruse the thesaurus lately! An earlier draft had a lot of ten-dollar words until my long-suffering proofreader (my wife) told me how stupid — not smart! — they made me sound. She was right. Ijettisonedcut them.Hope you’ve been healthy and creatively
fecundproductive during your own period of self-isolation! Thanks for stopping in for a visit!I was really hoping that working from home would free me up enough from the long commute to spend that time writing, but honestly, after a day of-non-stop virtual meetings, sitting at my desk for hours on end, the last thing I want to do is spend more time at the computer. I’ve made the weekends sacrosanct–office work is completely off the table. At least I’ve been able to finish Chapter 6 of the new novel and get a start of 7. I’m like you–I get so immersed in the world of the book that I even dream about the character and sometimes wake up a 3 am with a great idea–that’s the best:-)
As we were just discussing on your own blog, Suzanne, Zoom meetings have become the new social obligation — the new Have you got a sec?, as you put it — and it’s gotten nigh impossible to come up with a plausible excuse to get out of them since everyone knows you’re home!
My wife has encouraged me to stay off the computer on weekends — to take a break from work — and even though I completely concur with that philosophy of self-care, sometimes I can just hear those characters calling me out to play, like my friends used to do in the early days of spring from the playground right outside the apartment where I grew up. I enjoy — more like cherish, really — the time I spend in my fictional worlds; I yearn to go back at every opportunity. And if you’re anything like me, if someone comes into your office while you’re in the middle of a scene, it’s like being awoken out of a deep dream state; you’re disoriented, and more than a little irritated. (Surely Ken has invoked that writerly wrath from you at some point or another…?) That’s what I mean when I say art can be an addictive coping mechanism in its own right.
Happy to hear you’re being productive! I can only imagine what you’re wondrous mind is cooking up now! For those unaware, Suzanne’s novels The Dome and Smile are now available from her publisher as Kobo eBooks (follow the links).
The new book is called The Seventh Devil. Unfortunately, it’s not about Sea Monkeys but one day…😉
Freddy vs. Jason… Alien vs. Predator… Godzilla vs. Kong. You don’t see the crossover potential in Sea-Monkeys vs. the Seventh Devil…? That’s just a shameful lack of creative vision, Suzanne!
Sean – one of the best pieces about writing that I’ve ever read. I too feel the need to make use of this ‘suspended time’ and, at least in my head, be ready if not help facilitate a paradigm shift. Thank you.
Aw, thanks so much for saying so, Dave — I so appreciate hearing that. I honestly wasn’t sure if the thesis was perhaps insensitive or dismissive — if it reeked of privilege and/or pseudointellectualism — but I thought maybe it might make for halfway readable post. It’s hard to know what to write about anymore — are you finding that, too? If you blog about the coronavirus, it just seems like you’re one of a zillion other voices on the Internet saying in so many words I don’t know what to say about any of this. And yet if you don’t address it, the essays feel topically irrelevant. In other words: It seems trite if you write about the pandemic… and it seems equally trite if you don’t. I guess we’re all just trying to feel our way through these dark days, artists foremost. It’s the job of a writer to reflect his times — to find signals in the noise — and it’s just hard to accurately reflect what you yourself haven’t yet processed.
On that note, Stephen King — whose name is coming up a lot in this post — once defined writing as refined thinking, and blogging has always acted for me as a sort of intellectual incubator: a chance to sort out my feelings on a given subject and, correspondingly, workshop my positions through the process of writing a post and then engaging with readers in the comments. For me, the blog’s worth lies not in being a soapbox but rather a roundtable, in which I initiate a conversation, but the feedback I get — and the enlightenment it provokes — is inevitably more valuable than any content I supply.
Stay healthy, my climate-warrior comrade! As you yourself have written, “post–COVID-19 climate action will re-emerge with a new face and with a recharged impetus.” Meaning: We’re gonna come out the other side of this guns a-blazin’, so hold fast to your strength and passion till then — we’re gonna need it for the fight ahead.
Sean
“the post–COVID-19 country we engineer is going to require new depths of creative thinking and moral courage—and certainly of patience, as we envision a better America and then do the sleeve-rolling work of writing the first draft of that story.”
Oh, I hope we learn something from this. Will we, Sean?
I’m like you, doing fine with this. But with a little empathy, it’s so easy to see the anxiety, desperation, and suffering among those who haven’t the choices and resources that others of us enjoy. I do hope that we come out of this with the necessary resolve to address healthcare shortfalls, environmental degradation, and poverty that puts so many people at risk. I’m tentatively hopeful that November is the first step.
Here’s the bad news, Diana: Pretty much all the major fiftieth-anniversary Earth Day events scheduled with the intention of making 2020 the Year of Meaningful Climate Action have been canceled and/or moved online.
And now for the good news: It’s almost a moot point now, anyway. Every major news outlet is flush with impassioned op-eds on what comes after COVID, from the New York Times‘ ongoing series “The America We Need” to comedian John Oliver’s coverage on how the coronavirus outbreak has thrown a harsh light on how we’ve been dealing with the flaws in our democracy by perennially applying Band-Aids instead of undergoing long-overdue surgery.
And the unifying theme of these think-pieces seems to be that returning to the status quo when all of this is over is not going to cut it — that, as Oliver put it, we can’t simply “Control-Z” our way back to how things were in 2016; that is not going to be nearly good enough. (Even Joe Biden, whose campaign was previously pinned exclusively on Obama-era nostalgia, seems to get that now.)
And these clarion calls we’re hearing for big systemic change give me hope for perhaps realizing — albeit not in the way I’d necessarily imagined — the Green New Deal’s ambitions of trying to solve several interlocking crises at once, from climate change to wealth inequality to access to health care to even a page-one rewrite of the social contract itself, away from a model of extractive exploitation to one of empathetic coexistence.
And to be sure, the billionaire class — and their shills on state TV — will be pulling out all the stops to ensure things go back to “normal” (meaning their preferred system of extractive capitalism)… but that they’re so scared shitless should tell you something: There’s no going back after COVID-19. That world is gone. Change is coming. What that change will look like is still an open — and therefore hopeful — question. As John Oliver himself said: “The real test here isn’t whether or not our country will get through this — it will — the question is how we get through this, and what kind of country we want to be on the other side.”
I think you have reason for tentative hope, Diana. I truly believe — the very patterns of history suggest — we’re at a cultural and political inflection point. But we’re going to need empathic and artistic souls to help light the way through this and into the better world that awaits on the other side, meaning you better stay healthy! ‘Cause we’re going to need you…
Here’s to your health and creativity, my friend.
Sean
What a lovely reply, Sean. I’m a huge fan of John Oliver as I can tell you are too. If I lived in Venice, I would want to keep those dolphins. In India, I’d want that view of the Himalayas. In the US, I look forward to a living wage and healthcare for all. Yes, even old-Biden sees that things need to change. This has been and will be eye-opening. <3 Be well.
My hunch is that the coronavirus pandemic is going to supercharge public acceptance of the kind of “radical” reconceptualization — systemic societal restructuring — called for in the Green New Deal. Speaking as a climate activist — and resident of Los Angeles currently enjoying the positively alpine air! — the problem environmentalists have always had when we argue for sustainability is that we’re essentially speaking to an abstraction: No one can see carbon in the air, after all. But the coronavirus shutdown is a self-illustrating example of what a world with dramatically reduced emissions actually looks/feels/smells/tastes like, so we need smart, passionate people — ideally some of those working within or in conjunction with the Biden campaign — to seize this moment to sell the American people on an environmentally just, clean-energy future. I’m hopeful, Diana; you should be, too.
Just to be clear…
For various reasons, not everyone can be as productive as we’d like
Even me. Laid off. No kids to deal w/
As I’ve stated elsewhere, I have depression issues.I have some very productive days, but then some days where I just CAN’T
I’m trying to “listen to myself”, not be lazy but not force myself to do more than I can handle
If you can work on your stuff, can be creative, then that is good. If that helps you cope, then that is good. But if you can’t, don’t consider yourself a failure or weak or lazy or whatever
https://local.theonion.com/man-not-sure-why-he-thought-most-psychologically-taxing-1843004933?utm_campaign=TheOnion&utm_content=1587579933&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_source=twitter
That’s a pretty funny Onion article, Dell. Thanks for sharing.
Though most of the readers of this blog — the ones like yourself who care to comment regularly, at least — are writers in one capacity or another, many folks have neither a creative impulse nor outlet. They just don’t have that gene. My wife would be the first to tell you she isn’t artistic. She’s got vast reserves of talent — for business, at mentoring young people (particularly but not exclusively women), baking, crocheting — but no drive to express herself artistically. So, for those like her, the specific message of this post doesn’t necessary apply.
But I think its broader message does. We’ve been handed this rare opportunity in our always-on Digital Age to slow down, and to practice listening to ourselves. That’s what a dearth of external input offers. (Because hopefully we’re not spending all our time bingeing on Tiger King!) And that includes learning to be kind to ourselves — to recognize some days are perhaps less productive than we would’ve liked, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re being lazy. As that Onion article makes mainfest in its admittedly satirical way, we’re in shock right now, a state we won’t be coming out of till this is behind us, and certainly one we won’t begin to recover from without appreciable distance from this — both of which are still a long way away. We do ourselves a kindness when we consciously recognize the toll this has taken on our psyche, individually and collectively.
Friend of the blog Wendy Weir of Greater Than Gravity, after the first week of the lockdown, posted an excellent plea for kindness called “Getting Picked Last For The Zombie Apocalypse Team,” in which she advised us all to be nicer:
It’s good advice. We should all be practicing it, first and foremost, on the person with whom we keep the most company — which for many of us these days is the (wo)man in the mirror.
Stay healthy, Dell. And whenever you need friends, you’ve got them right here.
Great piece Sean. I believe writers aren’t that affected by the staying home part, but also being creatives it can be very affecting for some who think too much. I’m the same kind of busy I always am, if not more, but one thing, I don’t have the concentration to work on my book. Thank goodness for books and blogs. These are times to reflect and see what Mother Nature is showing us. A new normal has been sorely overdue but change is always the hardest part as we grow. through the spurt. 🙂
Nice to hear from you, Debby! So appreciate having your voice in the mix — especially in solitary times such as these.
I tend to agree: I would think writers — and creative folks in general — are probably having the easiest time (relatively speaking) coping with the seclusionary aspect of the coronavirus quarantine, since we are accustomed to working in solitude and being alone with our thoughts. I think the particular challenge we face, as I said to Dave above, is not knowing what to write about — not feeling as though we have proper perspective on this crisis to say something profound about it, but also not feeling like any other subject of interest is relevant or appropriate given all that’s happening. In that sense, having an artistic nature in times like these is a double-edged knife, because the very thing that equips us to cope with our present state of isolation also demands that we provide some kind of feedback on it, and it’s hard to know yet what to think or say about any of this.
Apropos, I have an author friend who recently completed the first draft of a sci-fi novel set fifteen years from now, in which a global virus has segregated people into different social categories; those exposed but asymptomatic are labeled “carriers.” Now he’s justifiably concerned — on the matter of thinking too much! — about the too-soon topicality of his premise.
I told him that my WIP — based on a story I’d conceived over a decade ago — is a monster-on-the-loose thriller that depicts the interdisciplinary/interdepartmental cooperation of local elected officials, municipal services, and members of academia as they earnestly work toward resolving an (admittedly fantastical) public-safety crisis. Lo and behold, that choice is now inadvertently relevant anew in our current public-health dilemma, in which we have a leader who’s purposefully eroded all trust in our institutions, and yet its the very interdisciplinary/interdepartmental cooperation of our institutions that’s going to steer us through this crisis.
But I’m not dwelling on any way in which it might speak to the sociopolitical zeitgeist; I’m just trying to write the scariest monster story I have in me. I think it would be a mistake for any writer right now to worry excessively, one way or the other, that his material is either too relevant or not relevant enough. Any attempt to make our fictions “fit” into the folkways of the moment — or, for that matter, evade them — will only lead us down a problematic creative path. We just need to tell the stories we have inside of us, and trust that, as long as we’re plugged into the world at large, the work’s reflection of the spiritus mundi will take care of itself subtextually.
And to your point about using this time to reflect on the message Mother Nature is sending — and I say this as both a climate activist and metaphysical naturalist — I very much recommend this article by Margaret Renkl titled “Now We Know How Quickly Our Trashed Planet Can Heal.”
Stay healthy, Debby.
Escaping into my own worlds is the pandemic I would’ve liked to have–instead I’ve been desperately focused on trying to survive, in case this thing really does spiral into another Great Depression. With a friend, I’ve expanded and fenced my garden and built a chicken coop. These things, which I toss off so blithely, represent a solid six weeks of physical labor. (It would go quicker if I was a faster carpenter.) In addition, there’s also the yearly brush clearing, weed-whacking, and tree trimming that need to be done every spring. And I’m finishing the front porch steps, which will require a small concrete pour. And I’m adding more solar lights, some on actual light posts, which require yet more concrete, because I doubt that PG&E will be more reliable than last year when it comes to power to rural areas.
And my husband and I need to replace the roof. Ugh.
I’ve honestly been too tired to notice much that other people are staying home. I rarely leave, except when I have to hit the hardware store for something I neglected to stockpile.
By the time I have time to have a more “normal” pandemic experience, it may be winding down. But at least all the projects will be done.
But I used to live in suburbia, and I remember my world being reduced to walking distance, although I added a bike to that, which expanded my horizons a great deal. All you really need is access to a store, a library, and church. I biked to my job. Funny to think that the only thing out of all those that would be open now is the grocery store.
I agree that we’re really too close to write about this thing in any depth, and yet to ignore it is to overlook the proverbial elephant in the room. I’ve solved that by choosing topics that are here-and-now and limited in scope. I’ll say something more profound in story form when it’s had more time to percolate.
Hey, Cathleen. Pleased to hear you’re weathering the COVID storm.
I’ve dwelled in rental apartments my entire life, so home repair — even home maintenance — is so not part of my experience! We’ve always had supers and porters come deal with our leaky faucets and malfunctioning garbage disposals! It’s a double-edged knife: On the one hand, we’re not responsible for the repairs, but on the other, we’re also limited with respect to the changes we can make to our living space, be it replacing aging window screens or making cosmetic alterations. With ownership comes responsibility — and some days it is liberating not to have any invested in where we live — but in return one gets a wider range of personal choices, which would also occasionally be nice. So, in that sense, I kind of envy that you’ve used this opportune (if admittedly unsolicited) time to devote to a spring home-improvement project.
My family owned a cabin in the Poconos when I was kid where I spent a great deal of time, but I’ve never formally lived in a rural area. As you probably know (since it comes up a lot on this blog), I grew up in the Bronx, and I’m very much a city kid at heart. I’m most at home on the teeming streets of a city, which is why I cherish any opportunity to visit San Francisco up north, and why I’ve so longed to move back to New York for the past five years. Los Angeles, as you also likely know, isn’t much of a city, and I live in the Valley, anyway — a heavily suburban area that doesn’t satisfactorily enthrall my metropolitan proclivities. And I fully recognize the New Yawk lifestyle ain’t for everyone — I have five siblings, none of whom live in New York and several of whom openly disdain it — but to me, it is home. Speaking for myself, it’s about more than mere access to stores and bars and cultural sites; it’s about access to the streets themselves — the arteries of the city. I’m reminded of this quote from Dracula: “I long to go through the crowded streets of your mighty London, to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity, to share its life, its change, its death, and all that makes it what it is.” That kinda sums up my feelings about New York.
I long for my hometown night and day, but never so much as I do now, with no certainty as to when I’ll be back there, and no assurances that the people and the places I love will still be there when I do. That’s been tough. It’s put the very thing that I’m always grasping for yet further out of reach. I’m presently writing a novel set in Upstate New York (not the city), and I sometimes wonder how much of the world in which it is set — the pre-COVID world — will remain on the other side of this. Which social practices that we took for granted — like working in shared spaces, shaking hands, congregating at public venues for mass gatherings — will have been permanently phased out by then? What if the story I’m writing winds up belonging to an old mode of existence that no longer applies, and never quite comes back as it was?
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not overworried. No one can predict what next week, let alone next month, will bring, and all I can do is write the story I’d envisioned as planned. Everything else is a future concern. I am in no way attempting to write about this moment, because it’s going to be years before we have any perspective on it, let alone any wisdom to extract from it.
Thanks for “visiting,” Cathleen. Stay healthy — and good luck finishing your home-improvement projects!