Corona Diaries: Silver Linings
In February 2020 I started a six month writing course with Faber Academy. At 10am on a Tuesday morning I joined another 14 writers - made up of a variety of ages, experience and backgrounds - and we nervously and keenly filed into Bloomsbury house for the first time. Clutching just our ideas and our newly gifted Faber Academy notebooks, we all dreamed of finishing the course with a publishable manuscript. For so many of us this was the first step into a potential new life.
Within weeks we were discussing what might happen if the threat of Coronavirus increased. Whether we’d have to stop coming in. Whether we’d go online or postpone the course. Mostly it was discussed lightly. Not a real threat to us. Until suddenly it was. One week we were carrying on as usual, sitting shoulder to shoulder round a large table, sharing pots of coffee and packets of biscuits and reading our newest writing out loud to each other. The next we were online. The first session online just didn’t work at all for us and the decision was made to postpone the classes. Of course this was back in March when we thought it’d be a few weeks and we’d get back to normal!
So many huge things have happened this year, so many of them deeply negative, that I can’t say I felt hugely impacted or particularly downhearted from this. Though it had been what I’d put aside much of 2020 for, I was fine with appreciating that there were bigger fish to fry for the moment. Plus, I felt so grateful that we’d already anticipated at least six months without income from me, and we’d now also be holding on to the money we’d expected to have to pay out monthly for the classes. By the time we returned to socially distanced yet still in person classes again a few weeks ago our class size had diminished by almost half. It was only then that it hit me what we’d lost in the pandemic. Usually this sort of course is heavily based on you forming bonds with your core group and remaining a writers’ group for the years afterwards, familiar with each individual writer’s style and how best to give them criticism. Throughout the lockdown we’d kept the group going via Zoom, meeting to write and share during our usual class times, but students who now suddenly had children at home 24/7, were teaching remotely, key workers or had less access to the internet, started peeling off. For those of us that remained it was a literary lifeline and often quite productive in a time when nothing felt real anymore. But we will never have the experience we should have had. Not everyone will get to finish that novel they started in such high hopes in February. We will never get to do the meetings with agents, novelists and publishers that were scheduled - they’ve all gone online. Valuable members of our initial group will probably not rejoin us again, there’s naturally a fracture between those that have continued and those that haven’t although we’re mostly all still in touch thankfully. We’re back online for classes again now anyway. It’s no-one’s fault of course but there’s a little fizzing ball of disappointment in me that this exciting adventure I launched myself on has been so different to what it should have been. That our group won’t get the experience previous years’ groups have had.
When I dwell on this I have found the best thing to do is to remind myself of the positives. Of the bunch of us that are still going despite the complications. Of the beautiful stories that are slowly emerging from our pens. How much writing time we had during lockdown! I listened to an episode of the podcast Reading Women the other day in which the women discussed the silver linings of lockdown. One cited all the virtual author interviews she’s been able to attend, seeing authors that would never usually be accessible to her. I too have had some perks. For years I’ve wanted to work with my local theatre the Kiln Theatre (previously the Tricycle Theatre) and finally during lockdown applied and got into a series of four free virtual sessions for local theatre makers. Run by Tom Wright, the sessions were engaging, insightful, packed full of helpful information and great guest speakers. I also attended an online writing workshop with James Graham. All without leaving my house. Usually in my daily life I don’t generally get the time or find the impetus to do these kind of things and they’ve been great.
And of course there’s a flaw in this thinking in that I’m reminded of the people for whom there hasn’t been a silver lining this year. But then again, without trying to be flippant, everyone finds their own silver linings don’t they? One group participant made the choice to leave because she got an interesting job opportunity that was connected to the pandemic, some of the mothers are exhausted but still welcomed the opportunity to be so hands on with their kids for a period of time and others have had the chance to live outside of London for months on end.
What I think I’m saying is: it’s a weird time guys. Feel what you’re feeling, whether that be anger, fear, panic, good cheer and try not to feel guilty about that. But try to be balanced and fair. Because this year, like every year but this one’s on steroids, will be full of ups and downs, joys and disappointments. It’s how you deal with it that counts. Or something like that.