The New Normal in Pandemic Times: Are You Still Writing?

Posted on April 20, 2020 by McKenna Dean

Photo by Sebastian Voortman from Pexels

I don’t know about you, but I’m having a hard time finding my balance these days.

As an essential worker, I spend most days dealing with the usual difficulties of a demanding job while at the same time, I’m in a constant state of vigilance regarding the coronavirus and whether I am doing everything possible to limit my exposure. That means wearing a mask for ten plus hours day, washing my hands after touching anything in a public space and before I touch anything else. Using my sleeves, shirttails, and elbows to open doors, turn off faucets, punch in keycodes. Wearing long sleeves specifically for this purpose, despite the fact external temperatures are beginning to soar. Disinfecting my hands to the point the skin is glassy and taut from the chemicals, and worrying about how I will manage one month, two months, three months from now if hand sanitizer and wipes are no longer available. Recognizing what a privilege it is to have access to soap and water.

Just prior to the stay-at-home orders, I’d begun watching Monk on Amazon Prime. As the pandemic spread, I went from enjoying the quirky show to being annoyed with it in rapid order, to finally accept that I had to be Monk in my daily routine now, with the exception of compulsively touching things. As a matter of fact, this pandemic broke me of a weird habit of my own: the need to place shopping carts in the correct order at grocery stores. Prior to the pandemic, I used to re-order the carts when I put my own up: putting the small carts on one side and the large on the other. It started out as the result of mild annoyance at certain shoppers who couldn’t be bothered to put the carts away properly, and morphed into a desire to make things easier for the kids who had to come out and collect the carts to bring them back into the store. But all that changed with the advent of COVID-19. Now I walk past disordered carts with scarcely a flinch. I’m not touching anything someone else has handled if I don’t have to.

This post started to be about the pros and cons of various masks I’ve tested. As someone who is a non-medical essential, I’ve tried a LOT of different masks. This morning I spent a hour taking selfies of me in various masks, and then another hour playing with filters to give myself different hair and eye colors. I can tell you that flimsy cotton fabric masks without filters probably aren’t doing you much good, but thick fabric masks with filters make it difficult to speak while wearing them because you can’t move enough air and they muffle your voice. And while N95 masks are probably the best thing to wear when you MUST go out in public (mine is one left over from when I was cleaning a mouse-infested garage last year), they suck down to your face like a facehugger from Alien, and though it doesn’t hamper speaking, within minutes of putting one on, I feel as though I’m standing outside in the middle of July in the deep South, where the air is warm and thick and hard to breathe. And this is from someone working in a temperature-controlled environment. Also, even the best fitted mask will fog your glasses at times, but a piece of tape on the top of the mask over the bridge of your nose can help with that. Like I said, originally I’d intended to write about masks, but I realized the selfies and the photoshopping are symptomatic of my pandemic brain right now. It’s easier to make bread, or watch TV, or take photographs (and play around with filters), than to do almost anything I used to do.

One thing I’m not doing much of is writing.

I know many of my fellow authors who say the same. They are finding comfort in other creative activities but not writing. Coloring in books, doing puzzles, decoupaging old bottles, felting, planting a garden. They speak of writing as something that may never come back for them, but I suspect, like me, they will circle back when the time is right. A recent conversation in an indie author Facebook forum seemed to indicate most people are falling into two distinct camps: those that are able to take advantage of the stay-at-home orders to write more and those finding it impossible to muster the energy to do the same, regardless of the demands of their day jobs. Would I be writing more if I could stay-at-home? I used to think so. Now I’m not so sure. I suspect I’d need at least two weeks to recalibrate my brain and rediscover my balance before I could sit down to write. To get used to the new normal.

It’s not just writing that is affecting me like this. I normally read 2-3 books a week. These days I DNF more books than I finish. It finally dawned on me it’s not the fault of the book itself–I’m just having a hard time concentrating that hard on anything. I’m avoiding my usual comfort reads. Contemporary romances make me want to smack the MCs when they can’t seem to overcome the slight obstacles to their love. Cozy mysteries make me snarl when the amateur detective can leave her own business for hours on end to go sleuthing and yet conveniently fails to share any information gleaned with the police. Science fiction, a lifelong love, has been thrust aside as being too potentially painful. I can watch an old TV show (one that I’m not that emotionally invested in) but I suspect if new episodes of The Mandalorian aired today, I’d have a hard time watching. I stopped watching Picard because I couldn’t bear to be hurt by my entertainment right now and I felt the risk of that show wounding me was high.

Apparently, I’m not alone in my inability to focus right now. There was a recent opinion post in the New York Times about this titled: Trouble Focusing? Not Sleeping? You May Be Grieving. Makes sense to me. It’s a good post. You should read it. It makes me understand that even if I could stay home, I probably wouldn’t crank out forty-one novels.

Lack of focus means hour long television shows also easier for me to commit to than a movie. I paid the hefty fee to stream the new Emma and despite the apparent delight of my fellow Jane Austen fans out there for this version, I loathed it. Seriously. I. Hated. It. Would I have enjoyed it had it not landed at the same time as the pandemic? I don’t know. Don’t ask me to explain COVID-19 anxiety. It takes different forms for different people.

My characters are currently languishing in the 1950s suburban neighborhood where I left them. Instead of solving the mystery they are there to investigate, they are being appallingly domestic. In fanfic, this kind of story is referred to as “curtain fic.” A story essentially about making curtains for the home, if you get my drift. It’s Hurt/Comfort without the Hurt. All Comfort, all the time. I don’t read curtain fic as a rule, and I certainly don’t write it. I’m watching in a kind of horrified fascination as my characters bake bread, wash the dog, mow the lawn, attend cocktail parties, and play tennis at the country club.

That’s not to say stories that center around these kinds of activities are without interest. English author E. F. Benson wrote a lovely series set among the upper middle class in the 1920s and 1930s. The two main ladies of the series, Lucia and Miss Mapp, battle for social prestige with a deadly intensity that is delightful to behold. Like the other members of the community, we watch with avid interest to see which of these two formidable women will get the upper-hand this time.

But that’s not the kind of story I’m supposed to be writing, more’s the pity.

Teaching myself survival skills (such as baking, or making masks, or planting a garden) gives me a constructive outlet for my fears, but at the same time, I’m starting to recognize there are some things I’ll never be good at, and I should farm them out accordingly. I’ve survived the first few weeks of sheer panic and rising anxiety: now I have to figure out what the long haul looks like. Eating my weight in carbs every day is neither healthy nor sustainable. I’m feeling the pull to make better food choices, to get outside and get moving again. I probably will plant a garden (I fully expect it to fail hilariously and catastrophically, with everything being consumed by groundhogs). I probably won’t start making my own clothes, despite the brand new sewing machine mocking me from where it still sits in its packaging.

And I will write again. I haven’t quit entirely, but my output is very low. For now, I’m letting my characters do their thing. If I have to cut out 15 K of curtain fic out of my romantic paranormal suspense story, so be it. But for now, I’m going to leave them alone.

Eventually the novelty of playing house will pall and the mystery will call Bishop and Knight back to their assigned duties. But right now, I have to let them practice self-care too.

Social Distancing and COVID-19: It’s Not Just About You #flattenthecurve

Posted on March 15, 2020 by McKenna Dean

photp by Ashutosh Sonwani pexels.com

I’m kind of mad at one of my neighbors right now.

I ran into him the other evening as he was loading his car for a cross-country trip–the same day the US government declared a national state of emergency due to COVID-19. Everywhere, medical experts are desperately pleading with the public to stay home, to avoid all non-essential trips. My neighbor, in his 30s and without known health issues, is attending a wedding with his wife out west. They’ve been planning this trip for months, intending to take in some tourist sights while visiting friends. His vacation is here, and he’s taking it, damn it. Given how hard most of us work, I understand his attitude. I do. Most of the time, that is. Not right now.

“Haven’t you been watching the news? This coronavirus is serious business. No one has any immunity to it, and people can spread it for weeks without showing signs.”

He shrugged and kept loading the car. “I’ve been checking the CDC site. The numbers aren’t that bad.”

That’s when I told him they aren’t bad because we’re not testing nearly the number of people we should be. They aren’t bad because we have a Monster-in-Chief who cares more about the stock market and his re-election chances than he does about putting the brakes on one of the most serious pandemics we’ve had since the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. I try to explain the meaning of a novel illness and the serious impact it will have on the vulnerable members of our society–which includes at least one person from every household I know–including his. And mine.

From his expression, I could see this information boggled his mind somewhat. I had to ask myself where had he been getting his updates? FOX News? The next words out of his mouth confirmed it. “But it’s no worse than the flu, right?”

No. Because the flu may not be as contagious. Because the flu, always serious for the elderly and the medically vulnerable, doesn’t have as high a mortality rate. Because COVID-19 is currently a pandemic capable of hospitalizing the population in numbers too high for the medical system to support. Because the flu, even new strains, is something your body has seen before, and maybe that helps you fight it off a little bit better. And when you get the flu and recover, it’s rare to have permanent physical damage. There are real concerns that this is not the case with the coronavirus. Survivors may have permanent lung damage.

This is not the flu.

Containment is no longer possible. We had months of warning from the events that unfolded in China but our government, currently led by a self-absorbed narcissist who DISBANDED the existing pandemic response team, has mounted a woefully inadequate, if not criminally liable, response to this global threat. The ONLY thing we can do is social distancing. And that means we STAY HOME. We don’t go out unless it is essential. We don’t go to movies or church or bars or birthday parties or weddings or funerals or have sleepovers with the kids. We don’t hold St. Patrick Day parades or hang out at the shopping mall. We don’t hug or shake hands or touch our faces. We wash our hands A LOT, with soap and water for at least 20 seconds in hot water.

Everyone has their own method for timing that. You can sing Happy Birthday. Gloria Gaynor posted a vid singing the chorus of “I Will Survive” on TikTok. I personally recite the opening sequence of Star Trek–bonus points if you do with Shatner’s timing. (I sub “person” for “man”, the same way they did for Next Gen) No elbow bumping for me, either. Vulcan salute, all the way.

My neighbor tossed another suitcase in the bag of his car. “Well, if we get exposed to anyone sick on this trip, we’ll self-isolate when we get home.”

If you get home, buddy. Have you seen the shitshow that are the airports these days? I can’t think of a WORSE way to limit the spread of a highly contagious disease than to cram thousands of people cheek by jowl into airports due to a poorly thought out (and completely useless) plan to suddenly close travel to certain areas, forcing everyone to flock to the airports in an attempt to return home before they are trapped somewhere.

Italy, and now Spain, are on country-wide lockdown. Based on the numbers of new cases, we’re in the same boat Italy was 1-2 weeks ago. The Italians have a better health care system than we do and they’re a smaller country. The mortality rate for new victims is staggering because they’ve run out of resources. Italian doctors are having to make wartime triage decisions as to who lives and who dies because they can’t treat all the critical cases.

Let me put it another way: I’ve been buying an extra item of the things I use most since February. Why? Because I saw this coming. So I’m stocked on dog food, cat litter, canned goods, dry goods, etc. I’ve been trying to tell people if we shopped like that–a little over time–we won’t overwhelm the store’s capacity to stock things. We won’t have scenes like this (from the last time I went to the grocery).

Much like if we practice social distancing NOW, we won’t overwhelm the US medical systems.

Because we run medicine as a for-profit industry in the US, our hospitals stay nearly full to capacity as it is now. If everyone gets sick at the same time (as we’ve seen particularly in Italy), hospitals will not be able to accommodate the critically ill. The hospitals will be like our grocery stores because everyone came in at once.

We’re not just talking about the lack of respirators or equipment for those suffering from Covid-19. We’re talking about a lack of doctors, support staff, heck, even GLOVES for your emergency. Not afraid of getting COVID-19? You’d better hope you don’t get in a car accident or need an emergency appendectomy. Because the staff, the space, and the resources won’t be there to help you when it’s your turn to need help.

This isn’t about preventing everyone from getting the virus. That ship has sailed. If we had a competent president instead of the Grifter-in-Charge, we might have been able to take containment measures, though in all fairness, given the number of people who don’t show any clinical signs for weeks, I doubt containment was ever possible in a country of this size. But having ICE arrest people as they take family to the airports doesn’t help. Neither does closing the borders to some countries but not all of them. Our president is more interested in pumping money into the stock market in the hopes of getting re-elected than he is trying to stem this pandemic. The irony is if he HAD chosen to protect the population first, the stock market would have been fine. He also has about as much common sense as a rock. Our president would punch a hole in a condom and believe it would still prevent pregnancy.

What’s important now is that we #flattenthecurve. That we prevent huge numbers of people getting sick all at the same time, which lessens the chances of survival for us ALL. Read the Washington Post article and take the appropriate precautions. And don’t be like patient 31 in South Korea, who refused to get tested on the recommendation of the doctor treating her, and instead went to a hotel buffet with a friend. When she got worse, COVID-19 was confirmed, but by that time, she’d exposed over one thousand people and South Korea lost the battle to contain COVID-19 in their country. The lesson we can take from this: Don’t be Patient-31. Stay home.

We could also have learned from S. Korea’s proactive management of illness in their country through aggressive testing. Experts in Italy admit they began testing too late, forcing the country to react to the crisis instead of preventing it. Oh, for competent leadership here in the US because we’re next. I type this even as I fear for my friends overseas, especially in the UK, which is also feeling the effects of Brexit and a similar lack of leadership at the highest levels.

I realize that it’s not possible for everyone to stay home. Workplaces are open, and we’re expected to do business as usual. Some bosses and employees, understandably worried about how to pay the bills still rolling in, may believe we’re over-reacting. Maybe we are. But better to over-react and save lives than look back even 1-2 weeks from now and wish we’d been more concerned. If we had an intelligent, proactive response from our government, I believe measures would be taken to lockdown the country now before we reach the crisis state that Italy is in. As it is, I believe we’ll be forced to take those measures anyway, only it will be too late to do the most good.

I saw this quote on Twitter today, before I decided it was best for my mental health of I got off social media for a while: