In some ways it’s hard to remember the early days of COVID. Though less than two years ago, it seems like such a very long time ago, back when memories of the old world were still fresh and none of us really had any idea where the hell any of this was going to go. Like many people then, I found myself with a sudden abundance of free time, which I strived to fill as much as possible with activities that didn’t involve watching Netflix or just staring dumbly at the wall. To help keep myself sane, I gave myself a challenge, write a story, adding a new section everyday.
When it comes to escapism, I’m apparently not that good at it. Though to be fair, between the pandemic and the increasing levels of political strife, it was hard to focus on anything else. The story that emerged over the next several months was set a few years in the future, a place where the COVID was much worse than it actually was, exacerbating our differences and leading to the collapse of society. The main character was a man named Leo, who saw the collapse as an opportunity to build something better, but somehow still felt just as trapped as I did spending day after day in my house.
I chose to write the story in a style called epistolary, which means in the form of letters, diary entries, articles, and the such. In this case it was in the form of letters sent by Leo to two distant friends, the reader only having access to Leo’s letters, and therefore to only one side of the conversation. My great grandmother was a sentimental soul who saved every letter she ever received. Many times I’ve read through them, and the strange juxtaposition of both understanding and mystery the reading those letters raised in me was something I wanted to capture. Something that seemed appropriate for the time in which I was living, where everything was unknown.
Unfortunately, after a little more than two months, I fell off the wagon so to speak . The world was somehow growing more chaotic, and amidst the sweeping currents of the time I had few moments to write. Besides, the world was moving fast and I could no longer keep up, shifting my story from a possibility to a distinct divergence in the timeline. I didn’t return to it until late August. I completed it as best I could, finishing the story before the two worlds could diverge any further. Though in the end, I told the story that I set out to tell, I was unsure what to do with it, so let it sit.
Now normally when I write a book, there is a rush to do edits and re-writes, and then to send it out in the desperate fishing expedition that is trying to get an agent. Though I did eventually do the edits and re-writes, and overall liked the story I had created, I found myself not sending it out to agents all that much. I was being pulled in so many different ways, most feeling more important than trying to get a book published. After all, what message could I hope to give with a book in some ways already out of date with the rapidly changing world around me? Such a viewpoint was not unique to that particular piece of writing either. It would be fair to say that my writing overall suffered, 2020 and 2021 being some of my least productive years both in terms of written words and the quality of them. July of 2021 was the first month in which I failed to write a short story since September of 2012.
To be frank, I’ve worried that perhaps the spark that has driven my writing for the past nine years has left me, snuffed out by our drastic and melancholy times. It felt as though I’ve just been going through the motions, my writing increasingly a habit rather than a joy. Things that seemed so big not so long ago, now feel rather small, and the things worth writing about now feel big beyond description. This is not to say that I don’t want to write anymore. Such a thought is comparable to me cutting off my own right arm. However, I have come to the conclusion that if I want to find joy in writing again, then I need to start from the beginning, and so that’s what I’m going to do.
Starting again requires some type of sacrifice, which is how I look at my decision to self-publish my latest book without ever really trying to find it an agent. Though I’m in essence guaranteeing that it will never be read by thousands as all authors secretly hope, I am accepting that I don’t currently have the energy to send it out to countless agents in the slim hope that one takes the bait. However, nor do I want it to just sit on a shelf either. I think my book has a message that is relevant to our times, as all authors secretly do, and I’d rather have a few people read it than none at all. So in the spirit of embracing the chaotic world we find ourselves in, and in seeing the chaos as a source of hopeful new beginnings rather than a recipe for dread, I’m glad to present to you, The People’s Republic of 47th and Long. I hope you give it a read, and I hope you enjoy it.