A poem for COVID-19 and ten inches of snow

I don’t write poems as much as I used to, mostly because I’ve gotten to an impasse with poetry. I know from experience submitting poems that my poems don’t quite have what it means to be great, and I don’t seem to be able to figure out what they are missing. I also think they’re too short compared to modern poetry. But here’s a depressing poem for today:

A glimpse out the window
at blasted apple blossoms
and snowfall blotting out
the first green of spring
and the doors barred
to keep contagion out —
the world could end
with an ellipse
at the end of a message
as
all
traffic
ceases.

April Snowstorm

We’re under a winter storm warning. We’re supposed to get 4-10 inches of snow today. In April.

The timing is all wrong. This should have happened on April 1st.

I don’t know what to do but laugh, because the alternative is to scream. Isolation is starting to be a bit difficult for me, and a dump of snow when it’s supposed to be Spring is just making matters worse.

I have no choice, though, but to shelter in place during the pandemic. I have no choice but to accept that our spring is going to be bifurcated by ten inches of wet, cold fluff. I don’t get a say in matters beyond my control, so I sit behind my computer and field work emails and work on improving my writing.

But what to do with the mood — with the tiredness, with the frustration, with the crabbiness? I’m not sure. Maybe I need to sleep more, but I get 8-9 hours of sleep a day. Maybe I need to sleep deeper. Maybe I need to get out — oh, wait, we’re on shelter-in-place and a major snowstorm is coming.

All I can do is keep my sense of humor up and stay productive. And drink coffee, definitely drink coffee.

A Time to Write

Me during the Pandemic

During the pandemic, I teach at home, and I have plenty of time when I have no emails to answer, to projects to grade, and no meetings to attend. And no distractions from the outside.

So I write.

I just got done doing another edit of Whose Hearts are Mountains, which had suffered in the querying process. I mainly edited for plotting, using the Save the Cat protocol. I now have that out to my friend Ken (Hi, Ken!) who will be as brutal on it as any developmental editor. Then I’ll tweak and go to my final 30 queries.

Now, I’m working on Gaia’s Hands again, the problem child of my lifetime. I’ve decided, through consult with a writing coach and reading over Save the Cat Writes a Novel, that I’ve been going about it all wrong. First of all, the story is an unusual romance in addition to being a fantasy, which makes me grit my teeth a bit because it’s never going to be marketable as a fantasy. Second, its timing is all off. What this basically means is that I am going to have to rewrite the whole thing. I know I could put it in a drawer and forget it, but it’s foundational to another series. And now that I’m beginning to understand the story, it is compelling.

When I mean “unusual romance”, I mean this: Josh Young has a thing for Dr. Jeanne Beaumont, even though he’s twenty-five years too young and she’s out of his league, what with that Ph.D. and that plant patent of hers. Jeanne Beaumont wishes she were younger and prettier, because she’s become intrigued by the graceful Josh Young.

There’s more to the story, because I have to juggle in the fantasy element. But you get the idea.

I like the fact that I’ve decided to try harder, even if I never get published. I think at this point that learning is more important than getting published.

I still have my fingers crossed for publication.

Day 32 Lenten Meditation: Surrender

This is a difficult column for me to write, because I am the sort of person who wants to fix things, to do things, to make things happen. I don’t like getting into situations where I can’t make things happen.

I don’t surrender easily. I am convinced that if I beat my head against something long enough, I will accomplish it.

Some things, however, don’t lend themselves to beating one’s head against something long enough. A pandemic, for example. I sit here, helpless. I can do nothing. I can’t even sew well enough to make masks.

This is the point where I have to surrender. I’ll be honest, I don’t believe that God will take away the pandemic, or that it’s His will that millions of people will get this disease. My God, when I believe in him, gives comfort and strength and the clarity for us to use our minds to solve things. So I don’t surrender to God’s will. I surrender to my own imperfect humanity.

Day 31 Lenten Meditation : Support

One of the most enduring traits of humanity is its ability to support each other during times of crisis. Just some of the supports I have seen during shelter-in-place are the following:

Education units (pre-K through higher education) quickly mobilizing to online without a break, and with sensitivity to students’ needs
Textbook publishers allowing free access to online textbooks over the duration of the sheltering
Internet Archive offering free access to their library
Local Facebook groups helping each other meet needs
Outreach by the Instagram cat community reminding us to take care of ourselves (I suppose there are others, but I tune into the cat community)
Countless others
Harbor Freight’s donations of N95 masks and face shields to hospitals
People on social media reaching out to the more vulnerable
And so many I’m not aware of

I’m not counting the millions of businesses, small and large, who are adapting their businesses to face our current reality — online and curbside. The businesses who are adapting their production to fit our current needs. (I’m only not counting them because there’s a profit motive).

The way humanity gets through these calamities — pandemic, natural disaster, war — is through supporting each other. We much each be supported, and we must each provide support.