Are you struggling to write in the pandemic? Are you looking back and seeing that 2020 wasn’t as prolific as you had hoped it would be on January 1, 2020?
You certainly aren’t alone. While writers don’t usually have a problem with staying home and writing, sometimes voluntarily not leaving their hours for hours or days at a time, the quarantines and the lockdowns actually didn’t seem to help writers much. You can read about how some famous ones struggled as well here.
For me, I found myself struggling to settle down after hours of running form one child’s zoom call to another, making sure the puppy went out to potty, getting my husband some coffee who was stuck to his chair for hours at a time with meetings and generally trying not to starve my family. When I did find time to sit down, my mind just couldn’t focus, as though it had grown more and more gears that churned at top speeds and I didn’t have the button to turn them off.
Did you feel like this?
Between the news and people texting to ask about things, from the emotions of what was going on and the toilet paper shortage, my brain was always working but not in a way that was conducive towards writing a book. I did write a lot during 2020. I would personally go insane if I didn’t write. But most of it was in my journal.
There was no one to really talk to about this either. While everyone was in the ‘same boat’ (which I find to be an off-putting phrase because no one was really in the same boat as another except that we were all locked down), no one around me seemed to understand my dilemma. One person I tried to talk to said I should be happy that I could just leave my work for a bit and not have to worry about it.
Enter shocked face here. First of all, if I stop writing anxiety and depression will hit because I’m made to write. I believe most writers are like this. Also, if I don’t write I don’t hone my craft. I don’t bring out a new book. I don’t get paid.
Other people had no sympathy as they were struggling with their own situations. While still others said, “I thought this would be a writer’s dream world. Stay at home. Isn’t that what you guys always complain about wanting more of?”
It would have been nice to have a writing community during 2020 where I could go to commiserate for a few hours with people who understood. Where I could brainstorm ideas and creativity with others. Where I could perhaps join in on writing sprints with prompts that would start turning the wheels of my imagination that had somehow been stuck and stagnate.
I had no writing community so I did what I thought I could: I dusted off an old novel and rewrote it. And even that was quite the struggle. So many days went by that I had no desire to even look at it. I felt flat and weary. And then I felt selfish for feeling flat and weary.
While 2021 might be a little better, I’m not sure it will be back to the normalcy of 2019. And even if it does get back to it, I’m taking this writing community thing seriously. I know I can’t be the only writer who feels alone and desperate, who wants some information from real people about how to publish, post on social media, find a good name for a character, brainstorm a book idea or book title and generally stop feeling alone in the sea of writers and published books.
For that reason I created the Creative Writing Community. A place where other writers are as committed to seeing each other’s success through as they are their own. Where we can get together to talk about writing and our novels, where we learn from experts in the fields we need to use (social media, newsletters, websites, ads, formatting, publishing, editing, illustrating, etc.), where we can write together in a live setting with prompts and without prompts several times a month. The Creative Writing Community is a place where we hold each other up through the valley of writing the manuscript and celebrate together on the mounting of book launch time.
Having a team of writers who are excited for your success makes this solitary art feel not so lonely and can have an enormous impact on your success as a writer and published author.
Come find out more here.