Hello Readers,

How are you all doing, hunkered down in your abodes? For the most part, I have no complaints. But I am also not writing.

I am mostly reading library books I checked out before they closed. I am now one book ahead on my 2020 Goodreads challenge. And watching James Bond movies. And playing on my tablet.

The virus doesn’t scare me or worry me, but the constant influx of info about it and the texts from my neighbors and the updates from our contractor are getting on my nerves. I have never grown so sick of a single topic so quickly. My focus is non-existent for writing. I stare at the page and walk away. I’m supposed to be revising my next novel, Accident Encounter, the second book in my Chance Encounter series. And one copy from a First Reader isn’t back yet. No go.

I am reading some writing magazines; I want to organize my office, but it is too cold in there as the room faces north. The warmest room is the living room where the woodburning stove has been going on the coldest of days. I am so thankful we are moving into spring and not winter during this lockdown, here in the U.S.

After the kids had been playing together with neighborhood kids, during spring break two weeks ago, the moms in my neighborhood decided it best they stop playing. There are 4 cases of the virus in my county. Four.

Places I like to write in, the library and local coffee shop, are of course closed. Church is closed. Driving to the store, it looks like a post-apocalyptic world, with little traffic anywhere.

My older two children, who both attend the local community college, are now doing their classes online. We had our spring break last week for my younger two, but we are back at school this week, mostly to keep them busy when they can’t play outside in the rain or with neighbors.

My hubby’s work keeps changing his schedule. First it was going to be every other day, then that got nixed. Then it was every other week, and then it was split shifts during a 12-hour day. He has the 6 a.m. to noon shift, his immediate coworker, the noon to 6 p.m. Now, starting Monday, he will be home for two weeks trying not to go cuckoo doing online training of some sort. He can’t actually do his work from home, but he will do what he can, thus the training.

I get emails from other writers and authors with tips on focusing during tough times, or ways to keep writing when life isn’t normal. I just can’t do it. I have no idea when my next book will come out. Maybe not this year at all.

We have had a contractor in our home doing various updates to our four bathrooms. He has been here since before the lockdown and will hopefully finish tomorrow. I can’t take much more of the noise and dust and disorganization, but thankfully the end is near.

This is what life in my house has been like lately. Some sense of normal, and some sense not.

How are things normal where you are? How are they different?

Not writing,

Michelle

 

 

#amreading

#notwriting

#coronavirus