Come What May, the Writing Life Rolls Along

This morning I overheard my wife on a conference call with her coworkers at the college where she works.

They were discussing how the college plans to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, coming up with various contingency plans. Upon hearing the phrase “contingency plans,” I thought about my life as a novelist and how this pandemic affects my daily work.

Under normal circumstances, a novelist spends the vast majority of his day utterly alone, writing. Under abnormal circumstances, then, the novelist’s life, perforce, must change. Thus, he needs some contingency plans. Following are a few contingency plans for novelists for likely disasters:

Global pandemic (e.g., COVID-19): Spend ALL of your day alone, writing, with perhaps your spouse working at home as well. Severely limit your forays out into public spaces like grocery stores, libraries, restaurants and the hardware store. Stay away from movie theaters and instead watch Disney+ at home on your 60″ HDTV.

Flood, wildfire, mudslide or other natural disaster: Spend ALL of your day alone, writing, until the natural disaster comes uncomfortably close to your house, at which point back up all your work and leave with banker’s boxes of your latest manuscript—by boat, helicopter, logging skidder, or other conveyance.

Imminent meteor collision with Earth: Spend ALL of your day writing, typing REALLY fast so you can finish the book you’re working on before the meteor hits. Then, try to upload the book to a satellite or have it engraved onto a titanium tablet before you’re immolated. If you have time left over before the meteor hits, get outside and take a walk. Maybe try yoga.

Invasion by aliens or a foreign army: Spend most of your day alone writing, keeping a loaded rifle or shotgun handy by an open window and taking frequent breaks to sip coffee and pick off alien/foreign military interlopers. Some of the aliens or foreign military personnel might claim to be fans of your work; don’t be taken in; plug ’em and get back to your novel.

Seriously, the news services are making a big deal about how people and communities might have to self-isolate in order to contain the spread of COVID-19. There seems to be a deep-seated fear of being alone. When I heard these concerns, I said to myself, “Isolation? Solitude? Avoiding large groups? Limiting exposure to other people? Talk about in my wheelhouse! This has been my daily life for decades.”

Right now I’m in the middle of reading and revising the latest draft of the “big book”—my 600,000-word, 1850-page epic novel. Therefore, as disruptive as the COVID-19 outbreak might be for other people, provided I don’t contract the virus it won’t change my day-to-day life (reading and revising a long-ass book) one bit.

I don’t mean to sound flip or callous, because I sincerely hope that this pandemic runs its course with a minimal loss of life, and I hope my friends, family and fans all emerge from this crisis unscathed. In the meantime, I plan on doing what I’ve always done—hunkering down and writing like Issac Asimov.

* * *

In other news, last month I turned 50 years old, and I went on a great skiing vacation. Reflecting on turning 50 (and realizing that, statistically, I have fewer years left to live than I’ve already lived), I decided that while my writing career might not be as commercially successful by this point as I’d once hoped, most other aspects of my life—most notably my health—are excellent. I’m continuing the plan I put in place a year or so ago: to only spend time with people I truly enjoy and to focus on my writing.

Feeling nostalgic after my 50th birthday, I spent some time browsing my junior high school yearbooks and ended up discovering a photo of myself from 7th grade that I’d never noticed before. In the photo, I’m reading a story I wrote to my English class (a photo of this photo appears below, but the original is maybe 1 inch by 2 inches, so it’s blurry as hell). On the blackboard behind 12- or 13-year-old me is the tantalizing partial title, “The Mystery of the….” The rest of the story title is blurry, but upon inspection with a magnifying glass I decided the last word on the board is “Sasquatch,” making the story title “The Mystery of the Sasquatch.” Given my keen interest in all things Bigfoot, the wilderness and Boy Scouts at that age, this title makes total sense.

I think it somewhat providential that I should discover this obscure photo of myself at 12 or 13 doing the very thing that I would ultimately grow up to do. It was at 13 years old that I knew I wanted to be a writer, and discovering this photo at age 50 seemed to give visual evidence of its inevitability.

For my 50th birthday, my wife took me to the (Von) Trapp Family Lodge (yes, the Von Trapps of The Sound of Music) in Stowe, Vermont, where we cross-country skied, hot-tubbed, ate well, and explored. I met the Von Trapps’ granddaughter, Christina, who was very gracious and welcoming; I ate exquisite French toast, drenching it in maple syrup made at the lodge; and I had the best pizza I’ve ever had in my life.

To close out this short blog entry, here are a few photos from my Vermont ski trip: