Writing during a pandemic ...

I'm sure, like many  of you, I'm spending more time on social media than I should. My socil media "flavour of choice" is Twitter. I have been tweeting since 2008, back when dinosaurs still ruled the earth. I started during the Arab Spring movement since I found it interesting what the journalists on the ground had to say versus what was published in the news. I also find there are more writers on Twitter.

I need to share a tweet I saw a couple of days ago. "This is a leap year, so Feb has 29 days, Mar has 300 and April is 5 years." I know how they feel and I bet you do too. Staying at home is necessary but it isn't a whole pile of fun.

As I mentioned before, I live in a small town where getting out for a walk, and maintaining social distancing is quite easy. If you can doo this, please do. It's good for you. However, as my wife and I finish up our 5th week of working at home, I'm finding I'm getting a little shack wacky.

I have more time to write (and still get my work done) however, I feel I'm getting flat creatively.  I do have a semi-productive solution that I'll share with you. It works for me and it might work for you as well.

Since I've never had the opportunity to write full time, I have a tendency to work on several things at once. I keep a couple of journals just to record random ideas and thoughts so that I don't forget them - I have a good memory but it's short and we all know that ideas can come from anywhere and at anytime.

Sometimes, some of these ideas connect together and then I start a journal for that specific story and all the ideas related to that story go in there. Finally, I have one manuscript that is officially my work in process (WIP).

So with my WIP, I push that along in the journal until the story gets to a rudimentry form, almost a skeleton of the story with a few bones missing. This is draft 0.25. From here, I write with pen and paper to get a first draft in place. I think of this as draft 0.5. Finally I type draft 0.5 into my lapyop to create my first draft.

I'm not the type of writer that can do a completed manuscript in two drafts. Not my talent, might not ever be. I write and polish and add and edit and cut and add again until I'm done - at least as far as I can go, with the talent I have. Manuscript three and four are in that state at the moment. Once I go back and rewrite on more time, I need to find an agent willing to help me go forward to get these published.

So, what I'm saying is that I purposely have several places to work on my writing, depending on how sharp I feel. Sometimes I work on new stuff, sometimes I just type draft 0.5 into the laptop. Each is a necessary part of the writing process for me and it allows me to do something productive regardless how sharp I feel at the time. If you are working at your writing part time, this may give you an option to do some writing regardless.

Be well and stay safe.