Well it’s been a hot minute since I’ve blogged, hasn’t it? But, of course, just because one is not blogging doesn’t mean that there are not things on one’s mind. In fact, there are a great many things on my mind. I’ve recently moved, and through the process of moving I am completing a few projects designed to regain the feeling of at least some semblance of control over my life and personal circles. This is the primary advantage of having a space of one’s own.
That and decorating, decorating is also fantastic. Should I get plants? (I’ve never had much luck with plants but now I want plants.) There are still more things to get framed and hung. The Quote Board will make its grand return. But life’s settling back down again, and life feels like it’s getting better.
Writing continues at a rather steady pace, as well, another advantage of a new home free of the distractions of the old. I am eighty-eight thousand words into the fourth and final book and building towards the end of the end and that’s kind of terrifying. Something that’s been a part of your life for so long coming to an end is a dramatic change, to say the least. My father put it best, something to the effect of:
“It’s funny. It’s almost like you’re destroying as you create.”
Another one for the quote board there.
But as the Freedom and Control series draws to at least its writing conclusion (editing will take years and years to complete and the releases are scheduled to take that amount of time as well), my mind goes to my other projects.
I’ve my murder mystery to get cracking on editing with (its characters are mad at me for neglecting them).
There’s a fantasy story I’ve outlined and experimented with set in a magic bar… and when was the last time any of us were in a bar?
The problem with both of these, and the thing that’s been bugging me the most lately (in that kind of annoying, intrusive thought way) is their setting. Even the fantasy bartending thing takes place in something approximating “our world.”
It’s kind of hard to set something in “our world” right now.
The murder mystery’s first draft was written in what I’ve been referring to as The Before Time (for dramatic effect, honestly) and I think that’s part of what has made it so hard to go back and begin rewrites. It opens with characters getting off a plane in Florida (ho boy…). They go out to eat, they wander Orlando, they visit other people’s homes. For those of us who are trying to do things right, when was the last time any of that happened without at least a giant spike of anxiety at the thought? I’ve only been out to eat twice since this whole thing went down and it’s still kind of a surreal experience.
Setting a story in the “present” means taking into account the masks and their deniers, the social distancing requirements and those who chose to ignore it, the travel bans and their loopholes, and the political ramifications because somehow a global pandemic is a political issue now. The risk here is either being a little topical (although I imagine it would be a great study in writing what you know), because even if this isn’t the focus of the story you’re writing, it’s something that has to be dealt with. Your characters want to get a few drinks from a bar at 11pm? Good luck, man.
But it’s from The Before Time to the Covidverse and beyond is the real dilemma here.
So, what happens? Obviously a story set in The Before Time can still be in the Before Time but at some point the realities of the Covidverse will catch up to time and setting, right? Even if it’s not the focus of the story, we will at some point enter a post-Covidverse era and then have to deal with the ramifications of that. Setting a story in a post-Covidverse and using that as a way to ignore the infection rates, the masks, the distancing, and the apocalyptic economic impacts of everything associated with it feels like a cheapening of the real-world happenings. You think setting it in the present would feel topical? Imagine a character just making an offhand remark about being glad they don’t have to wear a mask or how happy they are to go out to eat again (a conversation I have multiple times a day given my work). There’s the risk of jokes or anecdotes or a whole host of dialogue and internal monologue options that would seem forced if not handled well.
The reality is we, especially and unfortunately we in the United States, have no idea what the world is going to look like when this is all over. Setting a story in the post-Covidverse world is, at this point, speculative fiction as much as the rest of anything. As much as it can be a writer’s duty and joy to speculate, or even to encourage by writing something meant to be representative of the way things could be, it does feel a little different to be speculating about something like this. At least to me.
Maybe I stick with my fantasy worlds for the time being and just wait to see what happens with our world. I don’t pretend to have all the answers to this, and to be honest, these kinds of thoughts are themselves speculative. I run the risk of being (gasp) melodramatic, but maybe that’s the cost of having done so much worldbuilding. There’s a pandemic in Telgora’s history, and its ramifications are only hinted at over the course of the story. Something like that could work, depending.
But, of course, I’ve missed a truly simple, elegant solution to all of these writing problems because I’m afraid it’ll work as well in fiction as it has in reality.
We could just ignore it.
That’ll work, right?