{"id":53,"date":"2020-09-16T20:52:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-17T02:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecornerlotauthors.com\/OlynOzbick\/?p=53"},"modified":"2021-02-14T09:05:18","modified_gmt":"2021-02-14T16:05:18","slug":"dont-mention-the-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecornerlotauthors.com\/OlynOzbick\/dont-mention-the-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t mention the Pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Olyn Ozbick<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you know I have spent heaps of time since March 11 sitting in on Zoom calls, teaching Zoom classes, meeting with colleagues on Zoom, and taking Zoom courses myself. The reason I am certain you know this, is because I am as certain that you, yourself, have had the exact same experience in your own connections with the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And it\u2019s all been great, right? A refreshing learning curve at first. A chance to see other faces during lockdown \u2013 my daughters for instance\u2014finally. My writing colleagues\u2014hallelujah. My students\u2014hello again, yahoo! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now of course, it\u2019s all simply, day-in-a-life stuff, post 3\/11. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Very recently I had a great Zoom opportunity, along with a group of writing colleagues, to meet a person who is legendary in the publishing word\u2014because, wow, the connections we can now make via Zoom and internet. Ordinarily I would be chuffed to name this person, except that I\u2019m going to disagree with them in this bit, so, you know\u2026 writerly self-preservation and all\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This legend, whom I continue to be super impressed with and would love to work with some day (just saying!) offered the following advice: Don\u2019t write about COVID. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n

Wait just a second.<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Whaaat?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Back up, back up!<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

How is that possible?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

How do we writers move forward and NOT WRITE ABOUT COVID?  <\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

As I left the call thinking about this advice, what I could decipher was that it just was a bit of very well-intentioned business advice, not fully conceived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let me skip to a writing exercise I recently gave to my (Zoom) Creative Writing Class. John Gardner (another legend) in his book The Art of Fiction, offers up a fun little exercise:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Describe a lake as seen by someone who has just committed a murder and do not mention the murder. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Not possible, right? Not the tiniest bit possible to write a picture of a lake without injecting the emotion, the perspective, the reality of the Point of View Character having committed murder into every bit of every scene, every inuendo, mood, description, and emotion. If you know the POV character has committed murder it is THERE. Whether you name it or not.  It happened, and so it pervades everything. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I actually offered my class the following homework assignment, inspired by Gardner\u2019s exercise, even before having received the pronouncement from that well-meaning literary legend. Maybe give it a try yourself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Describe a lake as seen by a character sitting at the water\u2019s edge. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Photo<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Now try this. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Describe the lake as seen by a character sitting at that same lake during or post the COVID pandemic and don\u2019t mention the pandemic.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

See if you will ever be able to write anything that isn\u2019t about the COVID pandemic again. <\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As you know I have spent heaps of time since March 11 sitting in on Zoom calls, teaching Zoom classes, meeting with colleagues on Zoom, and taking Zoom courses myself. The reason I am certain you know this, is because I am as certain that you, yourself, have had the exact same experience in your own connections with the world. – Olyn Ozbick<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[10,12,6,7,8,11],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-covid-writing","tag-creative-writing","tag-olyn-ozbick","tag-the-corner-lot-authors","tag-writing","tag-writing-exercise","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcMwtG-R","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecornerlotauthors.com\/OlynOzbick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecornerlotauthors.com\/OlynOzbick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecornerlotauthors.com\/OlynOzbick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecornerlotauthors.com\/OlynOzbick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecornerlotauthors.com\/OlynOzbick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thecornerlotauthors.com\/OlynOzbick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106,"href":"https:\/\/thecornerlotauthors.com\/OlynOzbick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions\/106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecornerlotauthors.com\/OlynOzbick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecornerlotauthors.com\/OlynOzbick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecornerlotauthors.com\/OlynOzbick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}