13Mar

Come What May, the Writing Life Rolls Along

• Saved in: Fiction Writing, Novel Writing, Personal Essay, Vermont, Writers, Writing Experiences, Writing Life
• by Chris Orcutt
• with Comments Off on 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:

Tagged: Bigfoot, CDC, COVID-19, disaster, natural disasters, novelist, novelist contingency plans, novelist's work day, outbreak, pandemic, plagues, Sasquatch, typewriters, vacation, Vermont, virus, viruses, WHO, writing contingency plans, writing during COVID-19, writing life, young writer

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