Tell me what's on your mind, writing-wise
A break from the usual programming.
I thought I’d got over Covid, but then it roared back to life. I think I have what the NPR writer Nina Feldman termed ‘medium Covid’: heart palpitations, headaches and a fluctuating fatigue that at best makes me lightheaded and weary – at worst, unable to sit up.
It’s not unusual for people to feel this for weeks after the virus, but I don’t think it gets that much publicity. Googling for advice, I kept seeing it muddled in with long Covid (which is unhelpfully scary when it’s only three weeks since you tested positive). Nina’s article is the first I found that distinguished this reaction from long Covid, and emphasised how common it is. In this study, 13% of participants with Covid reported symptoms lasting over four weeks, but only 4.5% after eight weeks, and 2.3% after twelve; in other words, most people in my situation do not end up with a longterm problem.
Anyway, all this is to explain why today, instead of writing a proper essay, I want to hand over to you and ask you to leave a comment. What are the writing challenges playing on your mind at the moment? What’s something that you’re struggling with, or something technical you’ve been exploring in your writing? If you have a link of something you’ve read recently that made you think differently about writing, please post that too. I’d love to know what’s on your mind, and it would help me shape future newsletters once my brain is back in gear.
We did the first In Writing Creative Hour on Sunday and it was SO GOOD.
Thank you so much to everyone who came – I loved seeing you all and managed to write 473 words, which is 473 more than I would have written on Sunday otherwise.
I’d like to do another one – maybe another Sunday in late July? If any requests/feedback, do let me know.
Well, I’m sorry to short-change you this week. I look forward to chatting in the comments, but I also hope to have more to say by next Thursday’s newsletter. Until then, good luck with your writing.
In a writing workshop this spring, the first comment was that my essay was "blunt" and the next three participants echoed the sentiment. Ouch. But I found and read _Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative_ By: Jane Alison. I am starting to incorporate her ideas on time (expanding time, real time, and compressed time) and structures that can be found in nature - I especially like the idea of writing "waves."
Get well soon Hattie! I’m sorry I missed the writing hour. I really want to make the next one. At the moment I’m thinking a lot about trash drafts and writing being destruction as per your Holly Bourne and Elif Shafak episodes! I’m in trash draft stage and I need to get the words out without being precious, which in verse novels is HARD! But I love writing in notebooks so I can see the crossings out / destruction part and it’s not just all about computer word count...