Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody.
For years, you’ve thought to yourself, “If only I had more time, I could write a bestseller for sure!” The good news is your prayers have been answered. The bad news is they were answered by the God of Unintended Consequences. But the finger of the Monkey’s Paw has already curled, and I’m afraid we’re now stuck inside during the Coronavirus pandemic with no company but our thoughts, the blank whiteness of the word processor, and thousands of distractions including (but not limited to) TV, movies, books, and the abject terror of whether you’ll live long enough to finish any project you start.
At a time like this, writing may seem daunting, or not all that important given what’s happening in the world. However, being a writer gives you the freedom to work when you’re at home, and the ability to feel inadequate about your significance anywhere, so you really have no excuses.
Maintaining Perspective
People are suffering and dying, but the important thing is to make this moment about yourself and your writing career. A pandemic is like a really long writing retreat, except you can’t leave, and you don’t know when (or if!) you’ll see your friends again. Whether you’re social distancing, officially quarantined, or just deeply unpopular, you’re already doing the retreat part, so you may as well do the writing, too.
Setting Goals
They say Shakespeare wrote King Lear during the plague. This is not inspirational; this is the baseline. Shakespeare didn’t have wifi. With the tools you have at your disposal, and with the abject terror you have as motivation, you should expect nothing less of yourself than to create an artistic masterpiece that high school English students will write formulaic essays about for the next several hundred years.
Some people like to start with small, attainable goals and expand from there, but I recommend the opposite: set your objectives as high as possible, then watch them wither away as you check Twitter for the hundredth time to see a fresh dose of bad news. I don’t know if this is a productive approach, but it is astonishingly easy to execute.
Using Your Time Wisely
Don’t clog your schedule with phone calls and emails. Do you want to waste time having an edifying heart-to-heart phone call with your best friend during an hour of mutual emotional distress? Or do you want to get one tenth of one percent closer to finishing the second draft of the book you’ve been tinkering with for three years?
Coping with Failure
If, despite my advice, you somehow fail to create a masterwork during this pandemic, well, I suppose things could be worse. However, there must be accountability. Your punishment is to live your life knowing that, while the world was crumbling around you, you were too busy checking in on friends, playing board games with your children, and partaking in the sharing of human kindness to write a book that may or may not get read. You’ll have to live with this, friends, and because I am a mean jerk, I hope you live for a long, long time.
How much writing are you doing right now? Let us know in the comments!
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About Bill Ferris
After college, Bill Ferris (he/him) left Nebraska for Florida to become a rich and famous rock star. Failing that, he picked up the pen to become a rich and famous novelist. He now lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and looks forward to a life of poverty and ridicule.
Bill, this is your best column ever! (I’ll tell you about my WIP some other time…)
Dagnabit Bill, I said I wanted more time to write not for the whole world to have more time to write.
Congress must act now and bring out more literary agents and acquiring editors from the strategic stockpile hidden beneath James Patterson’s house. The flood of high quality manuscripts coming later this year will be…biblical.
Bill,
I chuckled a little to myself as I began reading your post until I got to this part and then I cackled out loud, startling my pet rabbit:
“Some people like to start with small, attainable goals and expand from there, but I recommend the opposite: set your objectives as high as possible, then watch them wither away as you check Twitter for the hundredth time to see a fresh dose of bad news. I don’t know if this is a productive approach, but it is astonishingly easy to execute.”
Thanks for the much-needed laugh!
I’m glad you enjoyed it! I’ve been perfecting that technique all week.
The perfect essay for times like these! Thanks for the laugh :)
And now I must get pack to my masterpiece – or the latest bad news…
Pitch perfect.
Thank you, Erin.
I agree, Bill, your best post ever! I had vowed not to check Twitter today, but now that’s all I can think of. Signing off now to check Twitter.
“People are suffering and dying, but the important thing is to make this moment about yourself and your writing career.”
Damn straight, Bill. In fact, I’m currently applying a DIY tattoo (all the tat parlors are closed) with that exact quote from above. My wife begged me not to, said she thought you were just being sarcastic when you wrote that, but I know you really truly meant it, and thus I’m willing to permanently etch the edgy sentiment into my skin. That said, I probably should have picked a better spot than the middle of my back for a DIY tattoo. Meh, it’s fine—I’ll figure it out.
Thanks for the midweek pick-me-up! (Huh? What d’ya MEAN it’s Saturday? You’re crazy.)
Cheers,
gl
Thank you, Greg. I appreciate your dedication to the cause!. Just use a mirror for the tattoo, that should solve all your problems, or at least replace your current problems with new and interesting ones.
Well done, Bill. Thank you.
The picture of a Corona typewriter made me laugh. I’m putting more time into my writing because all my meetings have been canceled and things seem to have come to a halt. I’m also feeling less guilty putting time into my writing because there is less responsibility from family (thankfully my kids are grown and gone) and others. Thanks for this post.
Agreeing with Dawn that the typewriter was a touch of genius. Thank you, Bill!
Bill, you outdid yourself. Thanks so much.
Hey, Bill, thank you for the glimpse in the mirror, and the resulting laugh. Stay safe out there.
Bill, I wish I had something witty and timely, or just witty, or somehow worthy with which to respond to this great post. Anyway, you always make me laugh. Thank you for providing the much-needed perspective. Be well!
Terrific. Thank you.
For being in absolute lockdown quarantine now for weeks (retirement community, nobody in, no groups, dinner delivered to the door by people who ring the bell and run), the outside world has been unbelievably obtrusive.
EVERYTHING has to be done the hard way: food, meds, doctor’s appointments, using the pool during the few approved hours, getting my mobility device replaced (from China near Wuhan)…
I’ve resumed blogging – about the whole thing from the inside of a locked down retirement community. Now I have to find something remotely witty to say every day.
It is almost settled into the long-term now. Almost. A few more days and I guarantee I’ll be able to finish the current masterpiece, scene 27.2. Promise.
What a hoot! Thanks for the laughs. I’m having trouble concentrating on my WIPs, but I think your post has scared me straight.
Back to the salt mines!
I loved this, Bill, every word. But what topped it off was the CORONA TYPEWRITER. We need the laughs, so thanks.
‘…whether you’re socially distancing, officially quarantined, or just deeply unpopular….’
I snorted at this. :) Brilliant.
Holy, Bill – did I ever get a laugh out of this. Thank you so much.
This is too funny. Thanks for all the laughter you have brought to each and every one of us.
Such a funny post.
I got up from my chair and checked: I have that same typewriter.
Thanks for the humorous look at our predicament.
Well, if Shakespeare can do it, then of course….😂. Thanks Bill I needed that laugh.
I had just finished the fifth line of my autobiography when a friend came through and pointed me to your article. It was when I read that a sense of humour was required that I realised the fifth line would have to be rewritten or scrapped. You set the bar high and made me laugh out loud. Thank you.
That redundant fifth line?
‘Dad’s mum committed suicide in 1919. How could she! Grandad never forgave her for that’