Discovering New Ways to Tell Stories During COVID-19
For the better part of the last nine years I’ve maintained a consistent writing practice: getting up at 6 a.m. to write for a couple hours before going into work. This is the only way I managed to publish essays and a book. When the COVID-19 outbreak surged in the U.S., I was revising a draft of a new essay. I dropped the idea weeks ago. Yet inertia has propelled my groggy body out of bed at the same early hour. (The guilt for not getting up is no joke). But I’m not writing.
This isn’t writer’s block. I’m not staring at my computer and failing to find words. I’m not frustrated. I just. . . don’t want to. Suddenly I have this urge to literally put pencil to paper to draw. Draw! I’m not an artist. I draw for shit. But I dug out my old sketchbook and started doodling. I tend to make the same stuff: sharp, angular tulips and lopsided suns, swirls in margins, dots poked in random patterns across the paper. Over and over. And then there’s lists scribbled in pencil: money I spent at the grocery store, at the CVS. I sketched out some charts to compare numbers.
The particular kind of deep thinking in crafting essays, from ruminating on research and word choice, to combing through memories to weaving narrative threads together, feel so irrelevant now. My mind is consumed with thoughts of washing hands and monitoring my grocery supply. Instead of going into an office, I work from home. I avoid other humans because they really might be diseased. Everything is different.
In a workshop at a writing conference, the author Lauren Groff gave this advice: “Write toward the heat.” Write about what you feel fired up about, what you can’t stop thinking about. That piece on female sterilization I was pitching? The new essay collection I wanted to outline? I feel no fire. Those ideas belong to another world.
Still I get up early. A niggling voice reminds me that I carved out time specifically to write. But maybe it’s time to re-evaluate. I’ve suspected for a while that my routines have become a crutch. And not just this one, but other routines in my life too. What am I missing out on or reflexively avoiding or saying “no” to that I shouldn’t?
In the Bowie, Jazz and Unplayable Piano episode of the podcast Cautionary Tales, host Tim Harford talks about the complacency of routines and how over time they can stifle creativity. He tells the story of jazz pianist Keith Jarrett playing an “unplayable” piano at a concert in Koln in the 1970s. He didn’t want to play but went along with it after some expert pleading by teen organizer Vera Brandes. The Koln Concert is now the best selling solo jazz album of all time. The point, Harford makes, is new restrictions can spur creativity and problem solving. The broken parts that made the piano unplayable forced Jarrett to play differently than he ever had. He avoided the tinny upper registers and weak bass and focused on the middle. He stood and pounded on the keys so the audience in the back could hear. The results were breathtaking.
Tremendous restrictions have just been placed on all of us, in every way imaginable. All our routines, our “normal” have been upended by the pandemic. Not just in where we physically can go, but what and how we think. Strategizing about getting groceries, for example, has become a more mentally and emotionally consuming task than ever. However, maybe there is an opportunity for something new and good amidst all the chaos and anxiety and uncertainty? To roll with the restrictions we’ve been given since it is absolutely clear normal does not apply. Could we make something out of all of this?
It’s clear to me now that my meandering doodles are my way of finding a story in this pandemic, even if it’s not in the essay format I’ve used over the last decade. Now is the time to experiment with other forms of narrative, to experiment in general. Stories help us make sense of things. Stories help us find meaning. Stories help us feel in control of what’s happening in our world. And all our worlds’ have been squeezed down to the size of the square footage of our homes. That is where the heat is.
To echo the advice of my coworker (who originally told me about the unplayable piano episode): figure out how to play the damn piano.
Originally posted on my website. I write a monthly newsletter called Humdrum about everyday things, like going to the gynecologist or doing tarot. Sign up here.
