Writing a novel – Page 24 – Marie Alice Writes & Reads

Diary of a writing project. Day 168: geese convention

Two villages were built near a water basin lost in the middle of a fertile plain.

A village for the rich. A village for the poor.

At that time, anglophone were the rich and the francophone, the poor.

As time went by, the villages merge to become one small town.

That’s where we decided to live. We liked the water, the view, the house we bought, one of the only one with a big tree on the front lawn.

All the relevant questions were asked and answered and vice-versa.

But we didn’t ask anything about the geese. And so, it was told to us that, twice a year, for a month or so, canadian geese held a convention on the near by quiet waters of the basin.

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Diary of a writing project. Day 167: The gloomy novel idea I will never work on

At first, I thought it would make a good novel.

The in-famous Covid-19 was just starting to spread its viral wings-tentacles-thing-ys, and getting out of China was becoming a problem.
The government of my friendly country sent an airplane to bring many people home.
Among those people was a family of four.
Problem was, the husband, both with Chinese and Canadian citizenship, was to stay behind. In the infected zone.

On the radio-show I listen to every morning or so, for a week or two, we’d listen to her anxious plea to get her whole family back home. Back to safety.

In real-life, this story has a happy ending.

However, in my mind…

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Diary of a writing project. Day 166: writing in the time of COVID-19

I spent the first half-hour of my 5 am writing session roaming Pinterest, looking for activities.

COVID-19 came to our small town, in the form of the ghost of fear and the ghost of panic.

Schools are closing. People are going nuts over toiler paper (oh by all the big G’s up there) and a dangerous, dangerous frustration is brewing.

It’s hard to focus on writing, with that health crisis in the back of my mind.

How will things change?

I know, it’s not kind, but instead of thinking of the poor people who caught that weird flu, I’m thinking about Mother Nature.

This morning, it’s quiet and cool, 4-degree Celsius, 40 Fahrenheit.
Canadian Gooses are goosing on the water nearby, loons are softly swimming around. Heavy clouds are holding the promise of heavy rain. There’s a warning for floods.

And yet, the roads are quiet, like the morning after Christmas Eve.

Theatres are closing, libraries too. No more hockey, no more basketball.

My day job simply stopped.

In front of the computer this morning, looking at my writing project, I’m thinking this is why I write.
To give hope. To make us, humans, dream when we’re happy, and when we’re facing a crisis of this magnitude.

I never feel like writing is useless. For one thing, writing keeps me mentally sain!
But these days, creating stories, to me, seems more important than ever.

We, creators of stories, can provide an escape, a comfort, a giggle or two. Our stories have that much power.

Dear writer friends, out of this worldwide crisis, out of the fears I have for my kiddo and my loved ones, I get sort of a re-assurance about the choice I made to go on this crazy writing quest.
Neil Gaiman said it oh so very well: « Art matters ».