Pandemic: Creativity During COVID-19

Posted by David Duhr in CoronaVirus      30 comments

Apr
18

Discussion question: During this CoronaVirus pandemic and stay-at-home reality, are you finding new ways to be creative, or are the old ways still working? (Or both?) Let’s talk about it in the comments.

Not to bang on about it, but these stay-at-home orders have really mucked with the routines and habits of lots of writers. Well, it’s mucked with the routines and habits of everyone. But we’re all writers here, so let’s talk about writers.

I wasn’t in much of a writing routine before the pandemic struck, so I’ve had nothing really to fall out of. But I’m writing much less than I was before, and I haven’t yet found a way to overcome this. And judging by what I hear on writing Twitter and elsewhere, I am far, far from alone.

So I wanted to ask some other writers how stay-at-home has affected their writing. Their responses are below.

I want to know about you, too: Have you been able to stick to your writing routine? Have you found new/different ways to stay creative, or are the old ways still working? Let’s talk about it in the comments.

Doing anything creative has been really difficult… I feel mentally and emotionally exhausted a lot of the time. I had planned to do the April poetry challenge and attempt to write 30 poems, but it’s now the middle of the month and I haven’t written a single word. I’m trying not to beat myself up about it. There will be other months.

— Adriana Cloud, WBN coach/consultant

Weirdly, my writing life hasn’t changed that much. I’ve doubled down on my routine because it feels like one of the only things I can control, and I feel like it’s important to maintain. I do feel sort of freed by this, like I’m not worried so much about the product as simply trying to maintain the habit of spending time doing the work, and not asking much more of myself.

— Tom Andes, WBN coach/consultant

Despite the sudden shift in work patterns (in-person classes to online classes) a lot of the things about teaching that kept me (or that I allowed to keep me) from getting deeper into individual creative work are intact — too much work to do, no sense that I can “indulge” in myself when there’s other things to be done. Once classes and grading are done and there’s a little bit more time and a lot less to do, I expect that I’ll find myself forming some new creative routines, some that involve writing and others that are more new, which is exciting.

— Aaron Block, Yak Babies host

I’ve started writing a new story on a typewriter, trying to add a few paragraphs each day. Using the typewriter means I have to keep going forward in the work. I can’t go back and idle and tinker, but just have to persist in the creation of some new part of the narrative, which has always been a struggle for me. I have to let go of the idea of perfection, which often creates so much paralysis and stands in the way of creativity. It’s a bit more freeing, and the actual typing is harder, so it feels like more work, even when the outputs are small.

— Cecily Sailer

My current project, begun before COVID-19 came to the US, is itself a new way for me to be creative, so it’s old (from the Before Time) and new simultaneously.

— Elissa Malcohn

Creativity seems irrelevant right now. I always thought in terms of trying to give back as a life purpose, and now I feel weighed in the balance and found… well…

— Anonymous WriteByNighter

While I’ve been writing a lot for Quora, I haven’t done any creative writing in the last several weeks. I’ve been spending too much time obsessing on the virus; the infection numbers and the deaths.

— David Lemke

To be honest, I don’t seem to have time to write. I’m retired, so you’d think I would; but the COVID-19 pandemic is making a lot of routine things take a lot of time.

— Jerry Schwartz

I can’t say that this lock-down has prompted me to adopt any new or alternate ways to work. After all, I am retired so I’m generally at home, anyway. What’s different is the wider world that throws new boundaries around my writing endeavors.

What’s mostly changed for me is an acceleration of what I’ve tried to do in recent years — that is, learning to write creatively. I’ve learned so much about story craft that I can talk about it and apply principles to my fiction that make it readable. Feedback from my writers group helps much with this. And then there’s the confidence that allows me to, pretty much, sit down at the keyboard and bang out whatever I need to compose. I guess you reach that point through practice in any creative discipline.

Without question, the biggest change in my writing life has been suspending our in-person writers’ group meetings. As I noted, we’ve moved to online critiques. Some of our writers are very uncomfortable with such Internet-based work, though, and others are too busy working remotely at regular jobs to make use of it. So it’s a reduction in our work, but it is still there. Using a newsletter and “status” emails, I’m trying to keep a thread of communication going. So far, the response has been positive.

— Ray Foy

Thank you for reading and contributing. We hope you’re staying healthy and staying safe.

This post is part of a series collecting the experiences of WriteByNighters during the COVID-19 outbreak. Here are links to the rest of these discussion posts:

How will you change you as a writer? As a person?

What’s making you smile and laugh

What is giving you hope and encouragement

What’s making you cry (happy & sad)

What are you reading

What are you writing

How are you writing

General discussion

WriteByNight co-founder David Duhr is fiction editor at the Texas Observer and co-host of the Yak Babies podcast, and has written about books for the Dallas Morning News, Electric Literature, Publishing Perspectives, and others.

WriteByNight is a writers’ service dedicated to helping you achieve your creative potential and literary goals. We work with writers of all experience levels working in all genres, nationwide and worldwide. If you have a 2020 writing project you’d like a little help with, take a look at our book coaching, private instruction and writer’s block counseling services. If you have a manuscript that’s ready for some editorial care, check out our various critiquing, editorial, and proofing services. Join our mailing list and get a FREE writer’s diagnostic, “Common problems and SOLUTIONS for the struggling writer.”