Writing project – Page 22 – Marie Alice Writes & Reads

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…

Continuer la lecture

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 ».

Diary of a writing project. Day 165: weird writing mood

In post #164, I talked about slowing down my writing wagon.

Not because I was drained. But because I was overdoing it.

By overdoing it, I mean waking up between 4-5am, and start writing, and doing real-life stuff very, very fast so I could go back to writing, and stopping around 9pm.

Start the FYI: I did write more words, but far from the mythic 10K words a day and such. I write slowly but surely. To write many, many words, I need many, many hours. End the FYI.

Today, I found myself some chores to tackle now rather than later, like going to the grocery store – no panic buy, I live in a small town in Canada, there are supplies, we’re lucky. The goal was to stay away from the laptop, step away from story making and enjoy day-to-day life things.

Biggest fear: ending up be less productive, away from my beloved writing routine.

Maybe because I was so eager to not let that happened, or maybe I was a bit anxious after having listened to the news – people are going intense around here too, to say the least, about the Covid-19 virus contamination.
Can’t help but think about « The Walking Dead », « Van Helsing », « The 100 », and other tv shows like that.

I was glad to go back home and write, because every time a poor person at the grocery store would cough, I would have a « gulp » moment. Is that person back from a trip somewhere, I would ask myself, instead of feeling sympathetic toward the person dealing with a cold. Not very charitable, to say the least.

Maybe for all the reasons above, I really dive into the writing project. And I did enjoy very much the 1990s era I choose to set the action in. Not that it was perfect, far from it. It was just… a tiny bit quieter, I guess.

If I can keep it up tomorrow, I may be able to reach this week’s word count of 7 000. Ambitious for me, slow writer that I am, either I’m working with a detailed outline or not.

Let’s hope for the best. For everybody.

Thanks for reading !