Everything can change in an instant. Most of us are living examples of that right now, as COVID-19 ravages the world and its people. So while I had another post planned for today–one about the essentiality of story at a time like this–I want to do something more personal. Something different.

I want to know how you are.

Where you are.

What you’re doing.

How things are different.

How things are the same.

I want to know if you’re writing.

If what you’re writing has changed.

If you feel inspired to write something else.

What that might be.

I want to know that you’re okay.

I want you to know that you’re not alone.

I want everyone who reads this to leave a comment, and for us to gather and share and know we have one another right now, even if it all feels so damned tenuous.

It is. Life is.

For me, my days haven’t changed overmuch, at least not on the surface of things. I spend my time at home, writing one thing or another, or reading one thing or another. But now I do that with my husband working nearby as well. I’ve been trying to connect more deeply to my work-in-progress, to use it for a dearly needed escape from reality. Results are mixed but I’m committed. When I start my day reading or listening to the news, I lose hours of productivity, and so I’m trying to make changes to my routine, though it’s hard not to seek those updates. There are more texts and calls from friends and family, too–checking in, worried, anxious. Sometimes I am bizarrely calm. Other times, filled with dread. But I’m okay, we’re all okay, and we’re being as careful as can be.

Before I turn things over to you, I’d like to leave you with this final thought:

Things will be different on the other side of this crisis, in ways known and unknown to us. We won’t be able to control much of that–most of that. But we can control some of that. The gift of chaos is in the ability to create a new order from its leavings. We can see from our place in the eye of the storm just what’s most important to us, and recommit to making those things a priority. We can choose not to return to the way things were, if the way things were wasn’t getting us where we wanted to go. We may think about our dusty dreams, and decide to dedicate ourselves to them wholeheartedly. It was directly after 9-11, when the message of life’s too short resonated most loudly, when I started to write what eventually became my debut novel.

Something wicked this way has come, but there will be an after. [Read more…]

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