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The Life of An Author In Quarantine

Spoiler…it’s not all that different than a normal day.

I know a lot of us are working from home these days with the Covid-19 pandemic sweeping the nation (world). But, for us writers, it’s not such a new thing. We’ve been working at home long before any of us were forced to.

You’ll find most of us are introverts and are more or less happy being home all day left to get on with our work. The only thing I will say is that now that a lot of us are “ordered” to stay home, it’s like we suddenly need to get out of the house. LOL Has anyone else felt this way? I know for me; I’ve had that thought a few times.

My son and I looked forward to visiting his godparents a couple of times a week for dinner and even spending the weekends there. It gets us out of the house, even gives me and my mom a bit of a break. Especially with my son not being in school right now, albeit he’s only in part-time Pre-K. So that’s been taken away from us for the foreseeable future because I’m not risking a huge fine or jailtime. It ain’t worth it dude.

My son’s teachers are being a great support system for us parents since schools have been closed. They’ve set up daily virtual circle times on Zoom, made videos and sent them out, video chatted with each of them individually, and emailed us ideas for activities as well as worksheets we can print out for the children to work on. Since it’s Pre-K, there isn’t a huge emphasis on doing a lot, so that takes some weight off our shoulders.

As far as my writing…the first week we were told to stay put (not ordered, just highly advised), we still went to my son’s godparents house, but there were only 4 of us and we weren’t doing anything besides hanging out and watching TV, etc. But my writing suffered because I…you guessed it, kept checking Facebook, reading articles, watching the news, all of it. All. The. Time. And guess what? It stressed me out and I couldn’t get my brain into my writing space. Plus, it didn’t help that I was trying to switch back to writing on the computer rather than by hand. That was a stupid move on my part. Blog posts, sure. Pen pal letters, all day long. My fiction? That’s a big fat NOPE. I just can’t. My brain doesn’t focus on it enough. It wants to check Facebook, or do other random things, anything besides write the words.

So, I’m back to writing longhand. Is it slower? You bet. Does my hand hurt/get tired? Oh yeah. But, do I enjoy it? You betcha! I’ve been doing writing sprints with other writers and this past week it’s been going really well. The only “downside” (if you wanna call it that) is that I have a lot of typing to do too. But I really don’t mind. LOL

So, that’s my world these days. We’re only leaving the house for essential things. Yesterday I got to go to the store to get cat food, litter, and paper towels. I grabbed some art supplies for us too to help keep my son occupied. The Walmart in our area didn’t have any toilet paper (LOL), but we’re ok with that for now.

How are you doing? Are you on lockdown? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

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