2020: The Year that Wasn’t
Dear reader:
Writing is a tricky business. Everyone in the world will tell you that to be a ‘professional’ at writing, and you have to sit and write every day, even if you don’t feel like it. I get that. I do. I have a strong work ethic, generally speaking, and I appreciate the results that come from consistently doing things when you don’t feel like doing them.
However: there are only so many emotional kicks in the teeth a person can take before they say to themselves, “You know what? This is the universe telling me to sit back, relax, eat ice cream, and watch a year’s worth of Netflix in a month.” If I have ever met a year that was like that, 2020 is undoubtedly it.
Every writer who gets emotionally stuck or whose creative well runs a little dry has tricks to get themselves back into a creative headspace. Mine comes primarily from travel. Whether that is a day trip out to the ocean or a month-long trip to a new country, a change in context has always been great for waking up my internal muse, changing my perspective, giving me fresh creative juice to work with. I’m also a huge people person, so I love to go people-watch in places I do not usually visit. I listen and watch and reorient myself with the commonalities and differences we humans share in our everyday lives.
Another thing I love to do is immerse myself in art. Museums and music are two things that will help me get back in touch with my own internal life, and I find a good three hours in a museum, especially one I have not visited before, can be truly invigorating. I find myself making up stories as I walk through the rooms, telling myself about this imaginary person or that fictional scenario until I am full to the brim with ideas.
The third thing that works for me is a long drive to nowhere in particular, listening to music and staring out the window, watching the world go by. I like to brake for signs for historical markers, find parks I didn’t know existed and wander around. I’m a natural extrovert, and just the process of being in motion and interacting, even in small ways, with new people is stimulating and inspiring to me.
So let’s talk first about what I had planned for 2020:
A quick weekend trip to LA to visit the set of Gilmore Girls: I’m huge into my fandoms, and I like to travel for them. It’s just who I am. I like going to places with strangers who love the same thing I do. I love that we get to hang out and enjoy each other’s company and revel in our love for our interest without fear or judgment. I was thrilled I had this trip in January. It inspired what was the last committed bout of writing I did.
A visit to the Painted Hills of Oregon: This I also managed to do. It was my last successful outing anywhere and occurred right at the beginning of March before we understood how much social distancing and staying put could help protect ourselves and others from the pandemic. I got some good hiking in, took some beautiful pictures, and came back feeling very inspired. Unfortunately, I came back and went directly into my office closing, my husband’s office closing, our daily lives being upended, and the emotional and psychological wear and tear of a global pandemic shutting down life as I knew it.
A month-long trip to Tanzania/Zanzibar/Seychelles: I had planned this trip to the point that my time off was approved, my flight was booked, my shots were updated, and my bags were in the process of being packed when this was called off. The pandemic was having none of my plans to visit Africa. Everything got canceled at the last minute.
A trip to my nephew’s graduation and New Orleans: New Orleans is my favorite city in the world. Yes, I said world. I am one of those people for whom nothing will ever replace New Orleans. I feel in love on my first visit at seventeen, the city embedded itself in my heart, and it has never let go. COVID canceled this, too, along with the joy of watching my oldest nephew graduate from high school, which was something I had been looking forward to sharing with my brother and his family for years.
The 30th Anniversary Fan event for Twin Peaks in Memphis and a visit with my BFF Kate in Nashville: I am a huge Twin Peaks fan. I’ve loved and been obsessed with the show since I was twelve. At one point, I did the math and realized I had spent more than a full month of my life watching and rewatching the show. I had a Twin Peaks costume birthday party when I turned 30. The show was a big part of why I ended up moving to the Pacific Northwest when I left Texas. Despite my commitment to this imaginary world, I’ve never actually been to a fan event for it, and when I saw there was going to be a massive weekend for the 30th anniversary with many of the original series actors and actresses in attendance, I decided to take the trip of a lifetime and meet the people who brought some of my lifelong fictional friends to the screen. The event was initially slated for May, then postponed to October, and two weeks ago canceled permanently.
My trip to see my best friend Becca give birth to her first child: I was also slated to spend a week in the Palo Alto/Mountain View area north of San Francisco while I helped bring my good friend’s baby into the world. Again, COVID made it impossible to have guests in the hospital, and flying my way into the life of a newborn was a health risk I wasn’t willing to take. Trip canceled.
My annual hiking and fandom trip to Forks, Washington, for the Forever Twilight in Forks (FTF) festival: This trip has become a large part of my writing life. My first ever trip to Forks in 2009 is when I got the initial idea to write Spooked. I came home, sat down, and eight months later, had completed the very first draft of my first novel. I’d never dreamed I’d write a book, and then—because of this fantastic trip I’d taken on a lark and mostly to watch the surrealism of an entire small PNW town pretending vampires and werewolves were real—I had done it! Since 2009, I’ve only missed two FTF seasons. This year, COVID has canceled my third. It is a shame because the town is terrific, the atmosphere is perfect for inspiring the kind of creepy ghost stories I like to tell, and the natural beauty of the Olympic National Forest is worth the trip, with or without the hilarious cosplayers and vampire-themed events.
I am sure I seem like a class A whiner to you right now, dear reader. “Oh, boo hoo, fancy pants white lady can’t go on her trips! What a sadness.” But here’s the thing. Going places and doing lots of things is how I live my life. I don’t have children. My loved ones are scattered everywhere. The trip to Africa was going to be my first chance in over a year to visit with my friend Ashley, who was there working for the embassy. My nephew’s graduation is a big deal because his father didn’t finish high school. Seeing the birth of Becca and Steven’s son was the closest I might ever get to seeing a baby born, as I cannot have one of my own. All of my friends are more tied down than I am, and thanks to my job, I have a lot of travel flexibility. I try to take advantage of my job’s fringe benefits because, until five years ago, I’d never left the U.S. These trips are meaningful to me because they are primarily centered around seeing the people and places I love and maintaining the rich relationships that make my life worthwhile. A good friend died a few weeks ago, and there won’t even be a memorial service I can attend. I cannot see his wife and tell her how much I loved her husband, what a friend and inspiration he was to me, or how much I will miss him all the remaining days of my life. 2020 knows how to pile it on, you know? There is seemingly no end to the ways this year can hurt you.
When all of my trips were canceled, my hopeful plans, good energy, and inspiration disappeared with it. But I tried, I really did, to find a way to make my life work anyway. In June and July, I looked toward the rest of the year and decided if I couldn’t travel as I usually do, I’d double down on spending time outdoors and focus on the wonders of my local environs. I booked a long weekend on the Southern Oregon coast, which I had never visited. I booked a week (this week, actually) long sojourn to Mount Hood to stay at a cabin in the woods and focus on my writing. In all these things, with COVID on my mind, I took extreme precautions. I shelled out for entire houses for myself alone with kitchens I could cook in. I preordered and picked up my groceries locally, so as not to spread potential disease in the new region I went to. I planned to stay away from others, entirely to myself, just a girl and her dog and a laptop. Long walks on the beach and among the pines for inspiration. No contact with other people.
But 2020 is nothing if not creative when it comes down to screwing up your plans. My weekend at the coast fell apart when, twenty-four hours in, the fridge in the house would not stay cold, and the lock on the door was damaged to the point that the door kept blowing open, leaving me in a place where my dog could take off at any minute while I slept. I gave up and came home, consoling myself that in about a month, I’d be in my woodland cabin, listening to Taylor Swift by a mountain stream and feeling the kind of melancholia that would surely help me refocus on my writing efforts.
I arrived at the cabin last Friday, full of hope and loaded with a week of groceries. I was staying through the long Labor Day weekend and until the following Saturday, giving me plenty of time to think, write, and commune with nature. The first two days were very productive. I reread and edited 30,000 words of a work in progress, and then sat down and outlined all the remaining chapters in that manuscript. I created a system of accountability for myself for the remainder of the year to keep my writing energy going even when I came home. I ate pumpkin spice things and drank tea and was having a wonderful time.
Then, yesterday at approximately 4:00 pm, the sky turned yellow. It began to rain ash. And my phone beeped an alert just as the power company cut the power to the entire area around me, covering three different towns. Due to a dry summer and high winds, the fire risk was high. Thanks to an aging power grid that could throw a dangerous spark at just the wrong time, the Powers-That-Be decided the best thing to do for community safety was to turn off the power grid indefinitely.
Let me say that again: the power was cut off…indefinitely.
When would it return? When the winds died down, and the risk was averted. When was that expected? A day. Maybe two. Maybe more. It’s a wait-and-see situation.
I tried, dear reader, to keep my chin up and stay committed to my task. But without power, my laptop has a limited lifespan. Write by hand, you say? Well, I’d love to, but the cabin was quite dark without power due to the tall shading pines surrounding, and the sky wasn’t all that bright given the ash so thick you could taste it. Read and do professional development? Again, I needed to be able to see to read even the stack of physical books I’d brought along. Work on my advertising efforts, update this blog, edit the latest episode of I Make Words (And So Can You!)? All of these things took electricity. Meanwhile, my food was melting in the freezer, my dog did not love the way all that ash made it harder for her to breathe, and going for a hike in terrible air quality in the middle of a potential forest fire did not seem like a wise course of action.
I stuck it out for 14 hours, hoping the risk would pass and that the power could be safely restored. I ate cereal for dinner, went to bed early, and hoped against hope for the best. But by 9:00 am this morning, I had to admit that power was still out, my food was on the edge of ruin, and no one could tell me when things might turn around for the better.
So I packed up my car again, hand washed all the dishes I’d used, and called to tell the vacation rental company that I was vacating over four days early. Then I drove the hour and a half home and unloaded my car, just grateful that there is power at my house, and my dog and I were safe and had somewhere to go.
So, where am I now? I’m in the offices of my small publishing company, writing you this blog post. Then I am going to open my current work in progress that I am on a deadline for, and I am going to start working at it, though my inspiration well is dry, and all my plans have been for not. 2020 is not interested in what I want. There will be no visits to friends and family, no walks through the cemeteries of the City that Care Forgot, no museums filled with works of beauty that leave me teary with awe. There will be no silly dancing or costumed events with other devoted fans of the fictional worlds I love. There will be no cross-continental adventures, no globe-trotting, no access to new cultures that I don’t yet have the words or experience to describe. There won’t even be a long weekend in Forks, my annual pilgrimage to the place where my imagination works best.
And apparently, there won’t even be the solitude of a writing retreat by the ocean or in the woods. 2020 does not care what my plans are. Instead, 2020 asks me the most challenging question I have faced as a writer: can you still do this when all the things that make you happy and give you a feeling of inspiration are out of reach? Can you still find the will within, the emotional energy, the mental space, and the desire of motivation to keep writing when none of the ways you usually do those things are possible?
Sitting here in this basement office with no windows, listening to Folklore for the fiftieth time, the truth is dear reader, that I am unsure. 2020 has left me uncertain of many things. But I know that I love writing enough to be willing to come here every day off I have remaining until I return to my day job next week and try. I will sit in this room, put my fingers on the keys, and I will do my best to create.
Because, as it turns out, I am a real writer. And the reason I am writing is because I can’t imagine not doing it, even under the repeated blows dealt by this terrible year.
