Hi, folks!

It’s just another day writing in social distancing land. Today’s episode is on dealing with the negatives for those of us trying to write during this unusual time in our history. Just like last week, there’s a transcript below! Also, don’t forget Writing Without Childcare is now permafree. If you find it helpful, reviews are much appreciated.

Here’s the transcript. Scroll on down if you just want to play the episode.

Please note: This is a machine-generated transcript of a conversational-style podcast. Sentence fragments and run-ons abound. It is not a representative sample of my work as an editor.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Book Echoes, the podcast on making great books while making a creative lives that work for us. I’m your host, author Connie B Dowell. And I am coming to you guys today on our family’s fifth week of social distancing. Now, I am somebody who normally gets a little antsy after one whole day in the house. So you can just imagine what it kind of feels like here on week five. And that is part of what I am going to deal with in today’s episode. So I’ve tried to keep things really bright and cheery. I think we all need bright and cheery nowadays. However, I would do you all a disservice if I didn’t talk about some of the dark sides of writing while social distancing. And this again sets aside a whole lots of much darker sides.

There are a lot of people who are sick, a lot of people worried about relatives people out of work or with reduced income who are lacking a certain amount of security. But, and that’s, that’s more than I can touch on in this episode today, but even if you are safe and your family are safe and you have a certain amount of economic security, the realities of writing while social distancing are, they’re tough. And I think it’s important to talk about the tough parts and how to address them as much as possible, acknowledging that not all things are possible.

So let’s get started with number one. Just the negative emotions that you experience while living in this unusual world that make it really hard to get some writing done. You’re probably going to be feeling a lot of frustration that your, your plans are completely canceled for basically the foreseeable future. We don’t know how long this is going to last. And every time there’s a prediction it gets moved back or forward and it’s really hard to plan things. There’s a lot that people looked forward to doing this spring and summer that they’re just going to have to miss out on. We’re all probably also a bit worried even if we are currently safe. It’s scary checking the news every day and seeing what’s going on out there.

We all also probably miss the outside world. For me a lot, a lot, a lot. I know there were a lot of jokes that kind of went around the internet when all of this began, “Oh, introverts have it made,” but everybody, introverted, extroverted, somewhere in middle needs some outside time. We all crave some amount of social interaction and we’re gonna miss that.

So, ways to deal with these emotions: Number one, take a break, take a break if at all possible. And again, I’m gonna reiterate like I did in last week’s episode, taking a break is not equal to working on your writing. Writing is joyful and wonderful. It certainly is for me, but it is also work. Taking a break means seriously doing absolutely nothing or doing something that has nothing to do with your work of any kind. Even if you’re not getting paid to write, if it’s more than a hobby to you, if it’s an ambition, it is actually work. So take a break, especially if you are starting to feel that frustration rise while you are writing or thinking about writing.