How to keep a writing practice during a crisis?
Breathe. Big breath. Again. In and out. Look around you; what do you see? Is it calm? Is there a tree with leaves blowing in the wind. Watch the light change. Now pick up your writing utensil and journal. During this time of crisis, maybe the novel waits, and you journal your experiences, your worries, your observations, your gratitudes.
"Relieve stress and anxiety by writing about what you see."
Put your character in a moment when the outside world looks like ours right now and they battle their usual needs and desires while navigated an unknown world where everything is new like no fans at National Baseball Games, canceled school while still paying tuition, and video conferences in place of in-person doctors' appointments.
WRITING TIP
Professor and NYT-best-selling author Jasmin Darsnik, "Song of a Captive Bird," uses this technique every day when she sits down to write.
1) Open three novels with amazing sentences.
2) Flip the pages and find a sentence that you admire.
3) Write your first sentence of the day modeling after this one that you found.
For example, T.C. Boyle's "Tortilla Curtain" opens with this sentence:
"Afterward, he tried to reduce it to abstract terms, an accident in a world of accidents, the collision of opposing forces–the bumper of his car and the frail scrambling hunched-over form of a dark little man with a wild look in his eye–but he wasn't very successful."
Modeling this sentence, here's what I wrote:
"Afterward, I tried to see where I made a bad choice, the shock of my menstrual blood filling the white threads of the bedsheet, Kourosh trying to hide my sheets to protect me from the President’s plan for me–the inward angle of the President’s eyes when he found out, the whispers of the Abahs that eventually made it to my ears–but instead, looking out at the waves crashing in front of me like the jaws of a hungry shark, I need to look at where I made one good choice to be able to tell you this story."
Be safe and be well! You are in my meditations.