Of Writers and Prose: Self-Isolation and the Writer

These are wild times we’re living in. Nothing like this has happened in four generations; not since the Influenza Pandemic of 1918. It’s the stuff of apocalypse movies, books and a few tv shows, but the funny thing is, it’s nothing like we thought it would be like.

I haven’t worked in over a month. As of this date, six weeks exactly. At first we were only supposed to be out for two weeks, and I thought great, this will be the perfect time to get so much writing done. I’d get a few chapters finished my Steampunk, maybe a revision or two on my Scifi novella, and even get a few pages written on a script or two. In the end, I’d come out of this pretty much ahead of the game.  One thousand words per day on novels and three pages of script writing; that was the personal goal I set up for myself a few days into my self-isolation. Not to mention, I’d finally be querying my zombie plague novel (perfect timing, eh?), and maybe get some blog posts done.

That was the plan was, but reality has a funny way of slapping you in the face. Reality sets in and I spent most of the time watching the news or reading reports on the spread of the virus. I’d burn myself out so much that I’d shut my laptop off and immerse myself with Netflix or dvds and go to bed late, only to wake up and start this routine it all over again. Two full weeks it went like this, and with each passing day with no writing I started to work on other projects just to keep my mind from thinking I was failing. Knitting projects, baking projects, even some baking experiments (which failed). I was doing everything BUT writing. I didn’t want to acknowledge that I’d failed at the schedule I’d set up for myself. I didn’t fall into the mindset of not writing means I’m a failure at it, but rather, my goals were easily obtainable, I just didn’t WANT to do them.

I couldn’t write because I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to immerse myself in my created worlds. I wanted to know what was going on in the REAL world, especially with my friends in the US. It was a type of FOMO, and the more I succumbed to it, the more I hated doing it, but it was an addiction that I had to break, but writing wasn’t a part of it. Hence the other activities. Three weeks I was like this; doing everything but writing. Then comes the back-end of it; trying not to succumb to the regret of NOT writing. Of all that time wasted doing anything but writing, and that feeling is more insidious that the first. As I said, I’ve been isolating for six weeks, and it may be another six weeks before I can go back to work. This blog post is the first new thing I’ve wrote, and it feels weird, but it’s a start.