When the pandemic hit and lockdown was imposed, I thought of the practicalities of how things would work with homeschooling and food shopping. I didn’t give any thought to my writing and how that would change, I just assumed (naively) that I would fit it in around the kids at night or the odd hour in the day. I certainly didn’t think that for the first month I’d barely write a word, or that it would take joining a new writing community to find my writing mojo again.
We Just Clicked
Living in rural France, I thought lockdown would be easy, in many ways it was how we lived anyway. I already speak to my parents via Facetime, and go for months without seeing them. I stockpile in the winter in case of bad weather as we’re 12 kilometres from the nearest shop. I’m also used to spending a lot of time with my husband and kids. Only I vastly underestimated how difficult that writing would become. Not only was the childcare much harder than I imagined, but there was also the crippling anxiety that set in about the pandemic. Anytime I sat at my desk I found myself surfing the news, despairing at the situation that was unfolding. It made it almost impossible to concentrate on my writing.
After the first few weeks, where I’d barely written a chapter of my new book, I started to despair. Anything I did write came out serious and dark – not really what I strive for as a rom-com author who prides herself at writing uplifting, feel-good fiction. Then I saw a tweet from a fellow writer saying that her and another author were word racing every day at 11am if anyone wanted to join. I immediately jumped at the chance. Word racing is the most peculiar thing, it’s basically a signal of intention. You all sit down at your computers at the same time and write as much as you can. At the end of the hour you tell each other how many words you’ve written. It’s the most motivating thing; it stops you scrolling and focuses your minds, as you know you’re going to have to tell the others how you’ve done after. The three of us (who have now become 12) would encourage and praise each other’s efforts. It soon became the hour of the day that I craved and looked forward to the most. Sometimes the hardest thing in writing is keeping your bottom on a seat and spending time with your manuscript without procrastinating, and the writing group helped to do that. We started Zoom chatting too, getting to know each other along the way. Living in France, I miss out on so many author events, so it is lovely to be part of a writing community.
I finished lockdown with a large wordcount and a new set of friends, neither I would have thought possible at the beginning of the pandemic.