On Writing During the Apocalypse

Writing has been the only thing that's ever come naturally to me. Generally, if I have an idea, I can see it through. If I sit down to write something, I can GO - in college, I was writing about one manuscript per year.

The Poet's Tarot is an outlier. This project has been my biggest challenge, and it took me three years. I started it in January 2017 with "Queen of Wands," not realizing at that time I'd make an entire tarot collection, and finished it in March 2020. As soon as it was done, I began rereading and revising with my beta reader.

After that? Basically nothing.

I socially distanced very well during the pandemic, and it made me a little insane. Between COVID-19 and the several other 2020 crises, I felt trapped in an apocalyptic hellscape. Even as an introvert, I need to go places, to be with people. These things help make my brain work properly. After a short time of feeling trapped in my apartment, I struggled to find meaning in anything, and this feeling persisted for several months.

Normally, writing is a coping mechanism for me. I write about the feelings and thoughts I am fixated on at the time and either create a metaphor or plot that's representative of what I want to explore and say. For some reason, I couldn't during the pandemic. I only wrote a few poems and a couple outlines. I tried fixing an earlier manuscript, and all my "fixes" will be deleted once I get to it in a couple weeks. My brain was too under-stimulated to attempt such a complex process previously.

And frankly, I was too sad. I was anxious enough that I was close to asking my doctor about medication.

But I've begun to feel better since getting my vaccine. I see more people now, and sometimes I go places. Initially, I struggled to see the point in doing a lot of the things I used to enjoy, but it's been coming back to me.

Last month, I had an idea for a story I believed I could actually write. I wrote a chapter - more than I'd been able to produce during the entire pandemic so far, and stopped. I believe that as I continue to get better on the inside, my ability to make art will continue to improve. It has to.

Even though writing came to a painful halt for me while social distancing, I did produce a few poems. This one is about staying at home all the time. Even though I wasn't myself when I wrote it, I think it works. If you're unfamiliar with the scientific theory "the big crunch," it's like the opposite of the big bang. If the universe is light enough, theoretically, it could come back together in a crunch.