Coming Soon: The Lockdown Journals

At the moment, it is 57 degrees out as I sit on the couch here in Northern Virginia. It’s lovely out after what I would call a pretty tough and confusing winter.

We had snow.

There was a pandemic.

So, there’s all that.

As I write this, I am in the middle of two different novels, both very different. I have also returned to the classroom, teaching English for real after a twenty-one-year break.

It has been interesting to say the least.

As I continue the work of being a working writer, I occasionally find myself revisiting old projects. Sometimes that can be embarrassing, like the times I come across my first novel The Geography of Home, which has some good chapters, but you will probably never see it. Other times, it’s exciting, like when find the first handwritten words of the book that became The Last Good Day, written in a park on a sunny day in San Francisco.

I get a lot of feels when I come across that first little notebook and the three others that made up that whole novel, handwritten in its entirety.

I don’t write a whole book longhand anymore. It was a lot of work, but when I come across those early pages, I smile and I feel proud of myself, seeing in those early scribbles the beginnings of what has become a pretty satisfying endeavor.

When the Covid-19 pandemic really hit home in March of 2020, I did what I normally do when stuff happens: I wrote about it. I had this thought that I would write about what things were like for us, for posterity, if nothing else, but with a very clear understanding of the fact that writing is what I do when I don’t know what else to do.

It's always been how I make sense of the world when it makes the least amount of sense.

So, I’ve just re-read the 10,000 words that I wrote, beginning in March of 2020. There are several entries written between March and July.

I don’t think they are my greatest writing.

I’m not certain that they are likely to be interesting to anyone.

But, I’m going to share them. Mostly unedited.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting them as the two-year anniversary of their creation approaches.

As I wrote about extensively in An Almost Tolerable Person, I think there is value in looking back.

I think there is value in reflection.

We are living in unprecedented times.

Things are bananas.

I wrote some words about it all as it was just starting out and I’m going to share them with you soon. I hope that they will prove to be of value, but if nothing else, they are a flashbulb moment of a place and time that we all shared.

So, stay tuned, and as always, stay safe and healthy.
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And of course, happy reading.