Locked down and blocked up

Writer's Block during lockdown

While social media is bubbling with samples of creativity and productivity during lockdown, many other creatives are wondering why they feel 'blocked'. Periods of solitude are often essential for focus, for losing yourself in your creative zone and coming up with your own personal masterpiece, in whatever medium you happen to prefer. Theoretically, having to stay off work and stay home for a prolonged period should give many of us the time and space we have been craving for. Writer's block is a well-documented phenomenon - whether you agree it exists or is just a temporary frame of mind - but perhaps it feels a bit bizarre that it should happen now, when we all seem to have more time and space to be the writers we want to be.

Puzzled as to why I personally was struggling with my own lack of wit or energy to apply to my own writing, I called a couple of friends to see how they were getting on. Here's what they told me:

June

June is in her late middle age and a semi-retired business consultant with a small portfolio of loyal clients that keep her linked to her profession while giving her the time to also write professionally. She is an author of school text books, and her enthusiasm for quality writing being key to communicating information effectively knows no bounds despite the dryness of some of the subject matter (maths, stats and economics).

Me: June, how's it going? How are you finding lockdown is affecting your writing?

June: Hello, dear, nice to hear from you. All well at my end, and busy, busy busy.

Me: So much for people have loads of time to be creative! Are you managing to write?

June: Of course I am. In fact, I'm making great progress with my latest project, and I'm planning out another. And I'm thinking of co-writing a book on the economic impact of the pandemic and the future of small businesses.

Me: I'm impressed, but how do you manage to keep motivated.

June: Good planning and good organisation. You know I like my routine, so  haven't changed it at all except allow more time to go to the supermarket and queue, and then take the shopping round to my neighbour who is in her seventies and can't go herself. I get up at the same time, go to the garden and do my Tai Chi (Note - June used to go to the local park with friends to do this but lockdown rules means she follows the routine at home instead). Then I do any client work that needs to be done - I've just started using Zoom, it's marvellous! - by which time its usually a stop for lunch. Then a call around the kids to make sure they're ok, a bit of housework and by three pm I'm back on the computer and writing. In fact, I'd say the routine works really well, because I'm writing better and faster than before. Perhaps it's a sense of being determined to get the project finished before the bloody virus gets me!

Me: Doesn't Neville (June's other half) interrupt you?

June: He's too busy painting the back room. We're hoping that when all this is over that Julian (youngest son) will come and live here. He's not at all happy alone so far away since he and Imogen split up.

Me: I guess the peace and quiet is helping you stay inspired and creative. No writer's block then.

June (laughs): Oh well, you know I think writer's block is a myth. You might think you've got no inspiration, but inspiration itself is a myth. The best inspiration is an unmovable deadline and the vision of the invoice you're going to send your client or the cheque your publisher has promised you. All you have to do is knuckle down and put words on paper. Once you start forcing the pen, the brain follows, grudging or otherwise. And I don't listen to the news until suppertime when I'm done writing for the day. By the next morning, the bleakness of what is happening has thinned somewhat!

Shefali

Shefali is in her thirties, single and a vet working in a small animal clinic. She has continued working during the pandemic, because pets continue to get sick and need treatment, coronavirus or not, although the clinic is providing emergency treatment only and she is working from home several days a week. Shefali is always inspired by the animals she encounters daily and by their owners, and enjoys writing stories for children.

Me: Hiya Shefali, how are things with you?

Shefali: All good, thank you,  pretty busy as usual. I'm working from home quite a bit, doing call outs as and when I have to but generally managing to give advice to owners over the phone and offer prescriptions etc. I've been going into the clinic either mornings or evenings and keeping the admin under control. It is a lot quieter than usual though. It's a bit weird, to be honest.

Me: Are you still managing to write?

Shefali: Well, funny you should ask but I'm really struggling. I started a new story at the beginning of the year; remember I said that I was going to try my hand at YA fiction? But I just can't settle down to write. 

Me: Why do you think that is?

Shefali: I don't know at all. I do have a bit more time on my hands, and you see on Facebook and on TV all these people learning new skills and performing music, and all I can do is lounge about in my PJs eating chocolate! Seriously, when this is over I'm going to have to get back to horse riding and work it all off! But as for the writing, I don't know. When I'm at work, I am focused, caring, I know exactly what I'm doing, but I find that in my spare time I feel tired, I don't want to think much and when I try to think about the story, or characters, or plot, I feel confused, a bit lost really.

Me: Writer's block then?

Shefali: I guess it is. Or maybe just a way for my anxiety to manifest. I feel perfectly fine most of the time, but I am finding it hard to be away from family. I speak to them every day on Skype and WhatsApp - in fact, I've spoken more to my aunties in India in these past few weeks than I had in months - but when I try to work out what I want to do in my free time, I'm at a loss. So, other than jotting down some research notes for the story, I have not got very far. But I am reading.

Me: Does reading help?

Shefali: Reading is so relaxing. I'm hoping it will eventually unlock my creativity again, and get me writing. I've just started Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall". I got the whole trilogy now that "The Mirror and the Light" is out so I'm giving it a go during lockdown. And I've set myself a target to have all the character summaries for my story completed by next weekend. Perhaps if I get all that going, I will get my mojo back! (And I hope she does because her stories are great!).

Colin

Colin writes poetry. He's a teacher in a comprehensive school and has been working incredibly long hours helping his students through this difficult time of uncertainty.

Me: Colin, how are you and the family?

Colin: Hey, good to hear from you. We're all well, and the kids have taken to lockdown surprisingly well, which Maggie is delighted about because I am working mainly from home and we were worried that I would not be able to concentrate with all of us in the house together. But so far so good.

Me: I guess with delivering lessons online and assessments and grading the A-levels, you haven't had time to write?

Colin: You've got it in one. Well, I have drafted a couple of poems, but these are literally in pencil on the back of a scrap of paper I was doodling  on during a Zoom meeting with the heads of department (I probably shouldn't admit to that!).

Me: Interesting, so where did the inspiration come from for those poems? The pandemic?

Colin: Not really. Not about people getting sick or the heroism of medical and care workers. I was thinking about the disengaged kids, and that the risk of them falling away from engagement with society is so much higher  now. The kids whose home lives are not supportive of education, who have so many disadvantages to overcome anyway, and now this. Or the kids who are vulnerable and at risk, and of course, we're not really seeing them now so we can't help them if help is needed. That's what's keeping me awake at night far more than A level results, and that's what came out in the poems. But don't misunderstand me - they need a lot of polishing up before I can really call that gathering of words actual poems!

Me: But at least you have been creative...

Colin: At the end of the day,  it doesn't matter whether as a writer you can be productive during lockdown. What matters is that we get through it. And perhaps one day, we can refer back to this experience for inspiration in our poetry or whatever it is we write. No-one has to do anything during this time. We are all different and we are all trying to survive. 

Quite an interesting mix of thoughts. Perhaps writer's block is a figment of the imagination, an excuse for not knuckling down. Perhaps it is that we cannot always be creative when we are anxious, or overworked, or tired. Or perhaps we just need to relax and let our minds mull. Shakespeare might have written "King Lear" during his version of lockdown, but none of us is called upon to be Shakespeare and right now, being ourselves is perhaps the best we can be. So my lesson? If I can't concentrate on writing, go and do something else. Like Shefali, I'll get my mojo back eventually! And like Colin, a scrap of paper with a selection of words is a start. I'd love to be half as organised as June though!

Escaping reality through fiction

The Arts helping to get through lockdown

If there's one thing that having to stay at home for most of the day every day during the coronavirus pandemic seems to be achieving is a resurgence of popular interest in the arts. While we are all avidly using technology to  substitute our usual habits of socialising, it is the arts that so many of us have turned to. Whether we have tuned in to streaming of music concerts, theatrical performances, the ballet, or virtual tours of museums and galleries, it is the arts that are offering some form of solace, that are helping us to reach inside ourselves as individuals and find ways of both escapism and explanation. 

We need to include literature and writing in this. There has been a surge in book sales across the world as one country after another went into lockdown, with stores reporting a sudden increase in the numbers of sales of physical books while shops remained open. After the lockdown, booksellers that are able to deliver or post books are doing so at a surprisingly high rate, while it is expected that the sale of e-books will also surge. The more intrepid book clubs have set up Zoom meetings so that book lovers can continue their exchanges on their 'book of the month'. Literature is one of the arts that is helping people get through this.

The joy of reading

Reading, of course, is a great way of keeping the mind active and distracted from the worries of what is an extremely difficult situation, one where we are each united with the rest of the world in our anxieties about sickness, survival, our families, our personal finances, the unsettling nature of change and not knowing when all this will end. 

That list goes nowhere to scratch the surface of those whose personal situations are extremely difficult: those with mental illnesses who cannot access easily their usual support systems; those in abusive relationships; those who simply have not got the money to feed their families; those with mobility difficulties who cannot get about their own home without help...the list could go on and on. What about those in war situations? What about those in refugee camps? What about those who live in poverty with no access to washing facilities - so much for those 20 seconds humming 'happy birthday'! And those who live in overcrowded conditions - no social distancing for them even if sick with the virus! 

Anxiety is rife, and reading is one way of freeing the mind from its grip, if only for short periods. Reading allows the mind to roam widely and freely - across the world, across time and space. Reading also keeps us away from the virtual reality that is social media with all its pressures, doom, gloom and 'fake news'.

In particular, reading fiction helps us to withdraw from the prison that our four walls have become and, where we are surrounded at close quarters by the rest of the family, gives as an opportunity for solitary thinking, a break where we can recharge our mental batteries. Equally, if we live alone, fiction introduces us and brings us into intimate contact with others in the safe space that is the mind. We can select books that take us to places we are unlikely ever to visit - outer space, for example, or 20,000 leagues under the sea - or that are light and bright and can transport us to a happier place than perhaps we find ourselves in at the moment. 

Writing in lockdown

So what about writing? It's not as if overnight any of us is going to write that novel that speaks of the themes of the deadly coronavirus, quarantine, isolation, death and suffering in all the various incarnations of these. Writing a novel takes time and, hopefully, we will long be out of this situation by the time our novels are ready to head for the printing press. If any of us writes one.

I guess that is why I have taken to short stories. Not that these are particularly easy to write - a good short story is its own literary masterpiece, and I am nowhere near skilled enough to write one of those. But at least with a short story I get a chance to delve into the world of a fictional character that I have created. I can let out whatever anxiety is lurking about at the time. I can let my mind work out sticky problems by relating these to fictional characters. I can exercise my imagination and simply ask, what if? The short story, like the poem, can take one theme, one person, add the question 'what if' and create a brief moment of escape for my readers. 

For me, it allows me to escape my own reality for a while, and then leaves me a sense of satisfaction that I think you only get when you've created something new, something that has never existed before, but because it is written, has a greater degree of permanence than any of us mere  humans might have. And if I get it right, with any luck, it connects with others. 

There are many themes that are arising for us during this lockdown. Isolation is one. Imprisonment is another. Loss of control of our lives is a third. Unexpected change is yet another. I am coming to really understand just how important a role in helping prisoners tap into their feelings and their creativity that writing has, and how great a contribution creative writing classes in prisons can make to help prisoners avoid re-offending in future. I think this is a theme I might come back to in another post.

Simply Stories

Today's Simply Stories contribution came from me asking the usual 'what if' and applying it to trying to see life from someone else's perspective. What if you loved music but because of a life-changing event, you were disengaged from making music and thought you'd never ever be yourself because you could not make music again? What if someone unexpected turned up and changed your mind? Quite a simple idea and a useful exercise in drafting a story. Find the link on the right hand side to 'All that Jazz' and see what you think. Then, have a go, write your own lockdown story and please, share it here by sending it through to me at my email address: 

jackiegirl@hotmail.co.uk

Reading the plague to write its stories

Reading the Plague

To be a writer you have to be a reader first - words of advice from an author who kindly spent time with me some years ago encouraging me to take up the pen but to make sure that I always kept up with reading. And for once, the lockdown means I actually have some quality time for varied reading.

A quick trawl of the internet reveals a veritable tsunami of writing about coronavirus. A combination of predictions of doom and castigation of any human misdemeanour, a cluster of conspiracy theories, an avalanche of advice (much of it unfounded, unproven and utterly useless in the face of an illness that has no cure), a cry of horror at something that threatens humanity - not human life, because that is lost in its thousands daily, neglectfully cast aside and wantonly wasted by run-of-the-mill tyranny, rampant capitalism and ordinary human cruelty. The threat we fear is the threat to the comfortable sense of control that humans like to have over their lives, over the world, over nature. 

When terrified - because fear is the over-riding emotion every person seems to share with everyone else during times of plague - humanity turns to stories, to narratives that might provide some kind of explanation, that might help an understanding of the chaos that appears to have suddenly arrived in our midst. So we flick through social media, and scroll through our search engines, allowing the time we have left to trickle through our fingers while we grasp at the straws that are slung out across the ether by everyone else, who feels pretty much the same.

So in the face of this endless stream of words, how can we best select what we read to obtain information, inspiration and, possibly, solace?

Solace in Stories

We, as a species, function intellectually through stories. We understand the world through narratives that exhibit patterns that our brains can pick out, recognise and to which we respond almost instinctively. Once we learn to read, to assimilate written information and assess this subliminally, and in particular once we soak ourselves in fiction reading, we simply can't stop. 

And once we join in the writing of those narratives, we can't stop that either. So I've put together a list of some of the writing I've enjoyed reading these past few days of staying home. I hope some of the ideas of further reading helps relieve any of my readers who might be bored, and inspire some fellow-writers to add to the welter of words storming through our world right now.

"Reading is an infection, a burrowing into the brain: books contaminate, metaphorically, and even microbiologically...But, of course, books are also a salve and a consolation." A short excerpt from Jill Lepore's article in The New Yorker of 30th March 2020, "What our contagion fables are really about" which takes a stroll through the literature of plague and touches on some of the fears humankind experiences through plague - in the face of so much progress, plague, pestilence, pandemic represent dramatic regress.

What our contagion fables are really about

Pandemics spare no person, no culture, no community. Poets have written about disease in so many ways, in all of humanity's languages. In Night Visitor, the medieval Iraqui-Syrian poet, al-Mutannabi, wrote an ode to fever:

"For she does not pay her visits save under cover of darkness,

I freely offered her my linen and my pillows,

But she refused them, and spent the night in my bones.

My skin is too contracted to contain both my breath and her,

So she relaxes it with all sorts of sickness.

When she leaves me, she washes me

As though we had retired apart for some forbidden action.

It is as though the morning drives her away,

And her lachrymal ducts are flooded in their four channels.

I watch for her time without desire,

Yet with the watchfulness of the eager lover."

(al-Mutannabi  (915-965))

For an interesting look at 1400 years of Middle Eastern writing about plagues and contagion, try this article by Mustapha Abu Seineh of 27 March 2020 in the Middle East Eye:

Plague and Poetry: How Middle East authors have written about disease

And here, in the Library of Economics and Liberty, Sarah Skwire offers some pandemic reading to help you through whatever hours of boredom that might be plaguing your lockdown:

Five Books about plagues and pandemics and five books to make you feel better

Personally, I'm opting for complete escapism and disappearing into some fantasy world or other, maybe Tolkein, perhaps Pratchett or possibly Pullman, or Rowling, or even a re-run of Moorcock...

Write your way through lockdown

Writing your way through lockdown

One of the many, many positives about writing is that it keeps your mind busy and it diverts your focus for a while from the worries and stresses of the current crisis. At least you can let your mind travel to other times and places and it helps you to create, so you have the added satisfaction of having produced something, despite the conditions.

Short Stories, Tall Tales

I recently collaborated with the teams at Gibraltar Cultural Services, other artists and local teachers to present a set of  creative writing workshops to teenage students as part of the Gibraltar Youth Arts Jamboree. 

The aim of the workshops was to give youngsters some ideas, guidance and tips to get off the ground and to keep going strong with writing short stories, and I used a slide presentation on PowerPoint to structure the workshops.

So, for all those who might want to write their way through staying at home, self-isolation, and in particular if we end up in lockdown during this difficult period, I am providing the PowerPoint below. Perhaps if you are thinking of spending a bit of time each day recording your thoughts and feelings during this time, and want to do so creatively, this will give you an impetus, or some ideas:

Short Stories, Tall Tales by Jackie Anderson

One of the hardest things is starting, said one of the students during one of the workshops. And I agree. Sometimes ideas are flooding through your mind - usually when you're too busy to stop and write them down. And then, when you have booted up the computer, or sharpened your pencil and opened up your crisp, new notebook, your mind goes blank, devoid of words let alone inspiration.

And yet we are living through a time of turmoil. So my advice to anyone wanting to use writing as a creative way of getting through the coming weeks, or as a distraction from the difficulties and the feelings of powerlessness and sadness, is to use those emotions. Make your feelings the starting point for thinking.

Using Feelings for Inspiration

Take anger, for example. Many people are expressing anger - at being forced to stay indoors, at the disruption to their lives, at the virus for the death and suffering, at governments for what are thought to be inadequate reactions, at those who hoarded the loo roll and free range eggs, at life, the universe, fate, God and everything.

Anger is a destructive emotion, we are often told, it is negative and can harm your mental health if you hold on to it. But for a writer, anger is another emotion, a powerful one, that can inspire, influence and inform your writing. Harness its energy, convert it through your words into something constructive and dismiss its destructive power. Writing releases the anger. By the time you've finished a session of writing with anger as a theme, you'll feel infinitely less angry. Maybe it's the physical act of writing it down that disperses that urge to break things. Maybe it's the fact that wondering whether to use a comma or a semi-colon simply diffuses the feeling.

Tips

So for some ideas on using anger - or any other feeling that seems to be dominating your life at the moment - to inspire your writing, try these:

• If you are going to write a journal of your experiences of the Coronovirus pandemic, add an emotional element to your writing. Write about the things that make you feel angry; write why; describe the feeling, how it makes you react physically; describe in detail those things that really have got your goat.
• Write a newspaper report on something you observe while looking at of the window - describe the situation, an event you notice, something you've spotted on TV, or even something completely imaginary. Writing in they style of a reporter is another way of exercising your writing  muscle, of working in perhaps a different style that stretches your technical abilities in writing.
• Create a character who is angry, who shares some of those feelings with you. If you haven't got as far as a story plot yet, don't worry, just get some words down on paper by describing the character in detail: the physical appearance, their likes and dislikes, their back story and why they are angry and the way the anger makes their bodies and their minds react.
• Write a list of comparatives, similes and metaphors for anger. Go to that Thesaurus gathering dust on your shelf or go online. You can then refer back to that list when you are writing another piece of work.
• Write about the situation that is making you angry. Write as if you were talking to a friend about it. Let the words pour out onto the paper. This will help you work with words, to find your own 'voice' - which basically means that you are developing your own unique way of expressing yourself.
• If you have a story in mind already, don't forget anger as an emotion even your hero is allowed to feel. Anger is a healthy, normal response to situations. Feeling anger is okay. It's how you show it that is either appropriate or not. So in your story, think about how your characters express their anger and why, and write down passages that you can then use to enrich your story.

And by the time you've had a go at one or two of those ideas, you'll feel a whole lot better, you'll have entries in your journal or blog or notebook and you won't feel so angry!

Remember, in writing, nothing is ever wasted. In future, these snippets or journal entries or draft stories and poems that you write may become the basis for an award-winning film script or novel or social history of your time. So let's get writing!

Share

Share some of your writing online  - if you'd like to share some of the work you are producing during this period of social distancing and isolation, then please contact me and I will publish your work as a guest contributor to this blog!

If you would like any direct discussion, tips or support with your writing project during this time, comment below or email me: jackiegirl@hotmail.co.uk.