You would think that, with all the newly created spare time at home, writing would go on at pace during the pandemic. Personally I have found that not to be true. Several other authors I know seem to have found the same thing. Why should this be?
I found it difficult to sit down and write for some time to begin with. I kept asking myself why this was. My conclusion may seem odd. I think it has to do with the general air of uncertainty generated by the pandemic. To begin with most of us probably thought that it would not last more than a few months. The newspapers and broadcast news were full of daily items mostly creating more uncertainty. We were, for the first time in my life, all together trying to understand our situation. Perhaps this was in effect a global fiction. It did not seem real. There were many twists and turns. I found myself contemplating all this on many occasions. This does not leave much room for actually generating fiction. One thought that kept popping up in my head was whether I should be writing about events in the pandemic or should I carry on imagining events in normal life. I hovered between the two for a while so the next novel came to a grinding halt. I eventually decided that my fourth novel should not try to recreate the pandemic. Surely readers come to my books for a degree of escapism? We continued to be bombarded with news about this awful new world.
Eventually things semmed to settle down rather. The phrase 'new normal' gained currency. I finally got down to work and the new novel is now nearly finished. Accepting that a book is done and dusted is no easy matter either. I continued to ponder how the whole thing could be improved, so adjusted, edited and tinkered. I am now in the final stages of reading, proofreading and publishing. Meanwhile the pandemic continues!
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