WRITING IN THE AGE OF COVID  by Cj Fosdick

   Social distancing is familiar to all determined writers.  We sit at our keyboards for hours when the muse clicks, feeling fortunate if we have a place of solitude, free of interruption. The engine that drives us is a deadline, storyline,  or even a line of persistent characters who nudge and push their way into the plot.  Starting early in the day, working all day or half days or even finding productive spurts in the wee hours before dawn depends on our biology and stamina.

   Most writers label themselves pantsers or plotters.  Pantsers write by the seat of their pants—opening up to a free flow of ideas and tangents that often need to be corraled in another draft.  Plotters discipline their writing with outlines and goal planning, maybe even setting time limits to spend on each chapter before moving on.  I’ve tried each method, but have found the discipline of plotting  too rigid to hold back a wandering  muse. The  research I include in each novel often pushes me in new directions. Add characters who come alive in dreams, whispering demands that make sense. Persistent demands.

  With the last novel in my trilogy, I had a surplus of characters, conflicts, two eras, two love stories and a true Irish scandal that overshadowed everything.  When I thought I had finished writing, I had over 111,000 words. After a month of editing, I culled it down to 88,000 words. Letting it marinate over time led to some insightful changes and a tighter manuscript after self editing.

  As much as I hate to credit a deadly pandemic with anything positive, I have to admit that  social isolation pushed me to the finish line.  A year ago, before the November-December holidays, I predicted I was just a few weeks from finishing the novel. Silly me! Who can  concentrate on writing with the pulls of baking, decorating, shopping and partying in the holiday season.  Add to that a dark saga of unexpected family problems after New Year’s--putting all writing on hold for months.

     April Fool’s Day was the gateway to renewed novel immersion. It was also the gateway to an explosion of Covid 19 in the U.S.  By Easter, the U.S. had over 500,000 cases and over 20,000 deaths. Ten days later the death count had doubled, with a person in the U.S. dying every 32 seconds.  I took a break to sew three dozen masks for family and friends, but depressing statistics along with daily breaking news was a hard challenge to novel concentration. Our Social contact was limited to a weekly visit to local groceries. Still I plodded on.

     By mid July, I finished the last chapter and another full edit. The novel was complete...I thought.  After submitting it to my publisher's editor, along with a character list and glossary of Gaelic words, she informed me she couldn’t even read it until September. Was social isolation pumping out a record amount of manuscripts to keep editors busy? I could not wait with a book that had no hope of release in 2020.

   Time to revaluate. When I turned from writing stories and articles to writing novels, I thought it would be a snap to do one a year. I fell short of that aim, but I do envy writers who can pump out more than one novel a year! If Covid was the spur to my novel finish, I was determined to keep pace with a release before the holidays. Going Indie was the only way that could happen in the age of Covid--barring any threat to personal health and more unexpected drama.

    Fortunately,  with the help of Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), I was able to publish both the Kindle and Print versions of  The Accidental Heiress before Christmas 2020.  I encourage you to take a look and, if you like it, look at The Accidental Wife and The Accidental Stranger too. 

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