What Will We Write?

Or

What Will They read?

It’s a big question mark for writers for a post-pandemic period. What will readers read, and hence, what should we be writing?

No doubt, it’s the big five-W questions again.

What?

The pandemic, of course. The one with the number nineteen in its name, though it’s mostly a twenty-twenty event

When?

When sheltering in place and wiping grocery bags with bleach will be in the rear view mirror

Where?

Here, there, and most everywhere. But not, in fact, in the same way everyplace.

Who?

Human beings on every continents save Antarctica, that’s who L

Why?

Religious leaders and some environmentalists already have global moralistic explanations to the "why" of it. I will stay away from such like the plague that this sort of thinking is. The book of Job says it best: we can seek “reasons” but should avoid thinking we ultimately have any handle on moralistic global explanations.

And now, back to the ranch. The place where stories are born and typed, which (for me) is the corner of my room in the corner of my home.

I heard that some people were drawn to stories about plagues. Not me. I had no intention of re-reading Albert Camus’ The Plague, or watching movies like Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion or re-watching Wolfgang Petersen’s Outbreak. No way. Nah-ah. Not.

In the thick of sheltering in place and leaving home as little as possible to get groceries from markets with empty shelves, all I cared to read, watch, and listen to were stories about normal times. Stories with people who greet each other with a hug, and gather to listen to music in large halls, and go out to restaurants where others’ talking made it necessary to raise your voice for conversation. "Normal," like always.

When we’re back to normal, it may be a modified normal. But stories written before will only need slight changes, not seem downright anachronistic like they do now. Of course, there will be novels with this experience in the background. Stories about how some coped, while others frayed at the seams. They’ll likely include the requisite one person dying in each. But I hope that in less time than anyone imagines at the moment stories will return for the most part to where we left them, way back in the historic time of the Fall of 2019.

©Chaim Goldberg Art

Fear of Unfinished Projects

I have a fear of unfinished projects.

It could have started with a rather ambitious project that, in hindsight, turned into a traumatic event. I was four years old when my mother discovered that all of her feminine napkins disappeared. Two packages, which she discovered an hour later in tatters, cut into various shapes.

“What is this?” she gasped. “Did you do it?”

“I am making an airplane,” I explained. It made sense to me. The feminine napkins had one side colored a lovely pink, which I thought made perfect, lovely, fluffy seats.

“You are making what? With what?” she said. Actually, she screamed.

I never made that airplane. My mother’s yelling knocked the air out from beneath my wings.

Many other creative bursts that went nowhere followed. At the age of twelve, filled with nascent romantic notions, a friend who lived about a five minute walk away wound up staying until midnight as we feverishly “made a book” using pop song lyrics and magazine cutouts for each page. It was so much fun she forgot to call her parents and let them know where she was. We vowed to continue our book the next day, and she again forgot to tell me that her parents grounded her when she appeared at the door so many hours after they alarmed everyone they knew including the police. That book of romantic song lyrics was never finished.

I had creative bursts that left feverishly begun and then abandoned projects throughout my teens and twenties. I was twenty-eight before I figured how to work.  

For me, it entailed a solemn vow to not begin something until I finished the last thing.

When writing, “finishing” is never final and done. But to me it means the first draft is written, then a second draft, and then at least one beta reader gave feedback and I revised again. That makes three drafts. After that, a story may sit in the digital drawer or go on to many drafts and revisions. But every manuscript, short or long, will include a typed last line, THE END.

This deal I made with myself has saved me from starting what I couldn’t or wouldn’t finish, and from hundreds of begun-but-orphaned roads to nowhere.

©Doogie Horner

It’s Always Spring

When my kids were at the junction of navigating college/conservatory applications, I found a site that helped me understand this process, so different now from the time when we were at that stage.

College Confidential has its trolls and plenty of mis-informants. But for the most part, it is tremendously helpful. Recommended!

One of the things that struck me when young participates wrote about their hopes and wishes for higher education was the criteria they listed. I related to top quality academics and seeking particular teachers. I resonated to the matters of costs, funding, and scholarship offers most of all. I was on the paying side, after all. I understood wanting a happy social life and nice living conditions. But from my dowdy perch, I found one particular mention that struck me as funny and a bit “off.”

They wrote about the weather. They wanted good weather. They wanted excellent weather. Weather trumped all. It loomed on the top of so many wish lists that I wondered if young’uns have totally lost their sense of purpose or maybe, as one parent on the site put it, imagined they were going to a resort to major in beer.

Until the other day, when it occurred to me that when I moved to the bay area one of the considerations, and the one that keeps me firmly anchored here to this day, was and is---

The weather.

Whether you believe in global warming, global change, or no change, it’s July, and as it is in January, here it’s always spring.

See why I’m smiling?

It’s the weather.