Writing in Difficult Times
Since the start of the pandemic, I spend most more of my time writing. No, I haven’t writing a novel and not many articles like this one. Hunched over my laptop, I type out email, lesson plans, and comments on student essays. Then, in the evenings, I type my fears and frustrations into Facebook and Twitter — platforms that I normally try to avoid.
It’s no surprise, I guess, that when I decide to spend some time on “real” writing, I often realize that it’s the last thing that I want to do. I stare at the screen for a while, then stare out the window, walk around my apartment, sit back down at my laptop and answer some email.
Not being able to write, and not wanting to write is unsettling. In difficult times writing has always been the one thing I could rely on. Writing helped me make sense of what was happening, connect with real and imaginary others, and keep in touch with different versions of myself. I wrote through two immigrations, and many ordinary and extraordinary calamities.
I’ve been writing since I was small, and in many ways writing made me who I am. It wasn’t just a form of “resistance,” but a way to mark out my place in the world, to give each thing its proper name.
Quarantine has made everything harder, but I wonder if it isn’t also a matter of getting older. Had I been ten, fifteen years younger, I suspect that I would have been spending my evenings writing poems and blog posts, no matter what. At 18, at 25, we always imagine ourselves as the protagonists of a story that has to be written or performed.
Now I mostly see myself as a minor character in whatever insane production the world has decided to put on. Does it really matter how I feel when I get up in the morning, or how I spend my days? Even if I were to sit down and write my story, it would be no story at all.
But maybe the times when we are least motivated to write, when reality seems too large and too overwhelming are the times when writing — our writing — matters most.
Newspapers and TV broadcasts will try to convince us that the frightening reality in which we live is neutral. There are facts and figures which call for a particular response. In fact, these outlets, and the experts and politicians who speak through them are writing a story for us, about us. They are the ones who assign us these small, insignificant roles.
When we look to the past, the narrative is easy to recognize. For example, after WWII many in the U.S. conformed to conservative family life because they were told that it was the right way to live after a global catastrophe. The TV show Mad Man played up the patronizing irony with which we can now look at the men and women who played their parts in that drama.
But we don’t have to wait fifty years to respond to the scripts that those in positions of power are writing for us. We can do so right now — and in, fact, it’s vital for us to do so.
Yes, of course, most of us are responding — through Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms. Sometimes these responses make a difference, but more often than not they don’t offer us the freedom to think and to speak that writing does.
A Tweet can be a vocal response, but more often than not it’s just a response. It does not revise the story, or indeed write a new one. It doesn’t create a space apart from the story that’s being written for us. It’s unlikely to create the possibility to think and feel in a new way — something that good writing can do.
Writing has a substance and a solidity that social media does not (even if our ‘data’ is stored there indefinitely). Even if we write for ourselves, our stories and reflections are objects that we can return to and make sense of on our own terms. We aren’t confronted with fake ‘memories.’ No one is there to say that your thoughts are invalid; and for that matter, there’s no audience to pre-censor your ideas before you put them down on paper.
Writing is never easy, and during the pandemic, when everyday tasks turn into burdens, it can fall by the wayside. There are some days when I know that I can’t write — and I give myself permission not to. But on other days I do my best to overcome the hurdles — accepting the possibility of failure, and the sense that I’ve “wasted” my time. I remind myself how important writing has been to me over the years, and how important it has been to others.
Because the times when we feel powerless, when we are told that we have no right, no authority to speak, are often the times when our writing matters most.
