In her Open Book Blog Hop, Stevie asks:
Has the pandemic affected your writing? If so, how? Have your writing habits changed in reaction to the ‘different’ world we are faced with?
Okay, it’s a tricky one this week, just because I’m not a writer. Not literature, anyway. So I’ll interpret the question as a more general regular activity rather than writing, specifically .
Actually, my regular activity is writing, but software rather than literature. And I ramped that down, just because there seemed to be more important things to be doing.
Over the last few years I’ve been doing some voluntary work. It is only calling people to chit-chat, but that human contact is important, especially when many of the clients are isolated anyway. At the start of lockdown, I said “if there is anything more I can do…” and my list doubled overnight!
Ostensibly, it was tangible things, “do you have enough food?”, but over time the intangible came to the fore, people’s mental health. Some people went crazy, while for others lockdown was no different to any other day. Please take a moment to let that sink in – some people are forced to live every day as though they are locked down. But while that is terrible, when lockdown did happen, these people already had their logistics sorted. Many people are still locked down (from February, they have never not been locked down) and I am still in contact with them.
So, there was one “regular activity” which got ramped up.
Another was blogging. Before, I posted 3-4 times per week, but I thought it was important to put out some kind of regular “heartbeat” message. Because when we post, whatever the subject, we’re also saying “I am OK”. It’s weird, because there’s nothing we can actually do if somebody isn’t OK, but we care anyway. I do, I’m sure you do, too.
So I started posting daily. I got involved with a few more prompts, which helped find something to write about. A lot of these were just links to a song or a photo, but I was posting daily. And, I tried my hand at fiction and poetry, because… why not? Between you and me, I’m really pleased with how the poetry has gone – absolute nonsense but I enjoy writing it, I find it easy, and people seem to like reading it.
So while I’m not so sure I’d measure volume, I’ve certainly found my scope has broadened.
Originally tagged: Open Book
Mister Bump 
Interesting how a prompt will sometimes get us kick started.
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Sometimes I write stuff related to nothing, but other times it’s a warm fuzzy “community” feeling just to join in with one of these prompts. And I’ve got to know who else usually responds, etc. I find to focus on a particular word is often easier than starting with a blank page.
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That is very true. It helps me.
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Thanks for the mention. Poetry is such fun to write, but for me it has to rhyme.
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Me too. I thought about this. Probably overthought. Bottom line, if somebody is left thinking “wtf was that about?” they we have failed in our most important goal – to communicate. Personally I like to write short and sweet, to raise a smile but if I can also make a point, so much the better.
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Yes indeed.
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The pandemic hasn’t altered the way I write/create, I’m just as haphazard in style as I always was, I just write whatever comes into my head.
Before we started our challenge site in June 2018, I blogged as and when, but never more than twice each week. First, I wrote the post and then adapted it to meet whatever the WordPress Daily Prompt happened to be.
Today, I continue to write twice a week, but these days I link to our twice-weekly challenges. We plan the challenges some weeks in advance of publication, so by the time I write my response, the challenge appears fresh.
Periodically, I add a third post and then I revert to type and search for a suitable prompt to link to my written post.
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I’ve done that once or twice – had a post prepared beforehand but then mangled a sentence to make it fit a prompt. But I like my prompt responses to be just 1-2 min, so that didn’t always work.
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Whatever keeps me sane at the moment is the way I feel about blogging 😀
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Your blogging has evolved quite a bit from when you first moved from Blogger to WordPress. Your newfound love for poetry is a hit and I have enjoyed it when you dabble in flash fiction.
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I’ve certainly become better at editing – some of those old postrs were long!
Seriously, it makes all the difference to have peopple encourage us, just by their interaction.
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