I thought the 2020 COVID-19 time of quarantine might be extraordinarily creative. Instead, it’s been a muffled form of grief. Grief? From what? I’m not really sure, but perhaps it’s grief from the leaving of our normalcy. We’re coping fairly well in our household. I will admit to feeling like I am drowning in learning how to cope with teaching online. Being an educator is a 24/7 job as it is. As doctors are concerned about their patients, educators are always striving to think of ways for their students to be more successful. Piling in new technologies and teaching from a distance has created a whole host of nightmarish issues as we navigate the ‘new’ form of education. Slowly, slowly, I am swimming to the surface and gasping for air, but it has been challenging.
One of the 2020 COVID 19’s blessings has been rediscovering intense joy in small things. I often wonder about my sanity, but I have been finding intense joy in the feel of sunshine, butterflies in the garden, a good meal with my family, or the wonder of the changing colors of the water in the Chesapeake Bay. It’s been a time of rediscovering my soul, and I am grateful.
I’m hoping that I am getting the educational baggage under control and can switch a portion of my creative energies from curriculum writing to creative writing. I’ve taken the challenge and have signed up for Nanowrimo 2020. The goal is to get the bulk of Tides of Blue written during November.
Tides of Blue has been a challenge to write. I keep telling myself that it’s due to the historical research that it involves. I’m not sure. The Green Man series seems to write itself. Tides of Blue is slowly gelling together in my head, and pieces of it come to me at odd times. And finally, I am falling in love and friendship with the characters.
Someone once told me that Virginia Woolf’s writing is like a series of colored slide images. I understand and wonder if that’s how her writing came to her? My writing often comes to me in small, visual flashes of a scene or a visual flood of words, either hand-written or typed upon a page. The scenic flashes of text in my head travel in a sinuous, joyful, and beautiful line of words that eventually come out of my fingers to be typed into the manuscript. Writing is almost always a magical experience.
I have great hopes for Nanowrimo 2020. I’m hoping the challenge of the contest and the quarantine challenge will provide the impetus to complete the novel. Wish me luck!
