Welcome back to another blog hop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.
Don’t forget to click the link to see what everyone else has to say on this week’s subject. It’s at the end of my post.
Looking back at the Covid years, did that time impact your current writing?
When we went into lockdown in March 2020, I thought that it would mean that I would be writing a lot more. After all, there would be fewer distractions. But it didn’t quite work out like that.
You see, I hadn’t reckoned on Zoom meetings being such a time-suck, or the fact that the voices in my head were unwilling to increase their output to fill the extra time I now had available.
There was one thing that I did notice. That my writing changed.
There is a definite difference between what I wrote before, during and after Covid. Before the pandemic, my writing style was lighter; there was more hope in it.
During COVID, what I wrote was darker and harder-hitting. It was a shock to find my style had changed.
We are all products of our environment in everything we are and do. And our circumstances must influence our output.
Looking back, I think that was when my writing grew up.
I can see that trend continued after the lockdown restrictions were eased. Even my Andorra Pett stories, which were always meant to be light and humorous, adopted a more serious tone in the later stories.
Tales like The Syk’m, We Are Saul, and I Remember Everything are a lot edgier. My plots and endings have become less clichéd and saccharine, and I think that a sense of fatalistic realism has crept in. For a time, it unsettled me.
I suppose that change was only to be expected. After all, the world had become a different place.
Almost overnight.
Now, six years on from the first lockdown, everything has settled down. The Covid years are no more than a memory. As for my writing, the voices still work at the same speed as they ever did.
The good thing is that I’m much more comfortable with my new style.
What do you think about this week’s subject?
Let me know by leaving me a comment.
While you’re here, please click the InLinkz link to check out what my fellow writers have to say about this week’s topic.
I’ll be back with another post on Thursday. See you then. Meanwhile, have a great week.
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Stevie Turner
I wasn’t on a permanent contract at the hospital at that time, and so in a great effort not to catch Covid I stopped working and wrote books instead! Sam worked from home, and so he still got paid. The arrangement suited us both very well, and in time I was able to spend the last 2 years before retirement in 2023 working from home.
Richard Dee
I had a daughter working in Intensive Care, her husband was a hospital doctor. My second daughter is a midwife. No working from home for them. Scary times.
P.J. MacLayne
I started writing darker too, but part of that was a natural progression of the series and part of it was my desire to tackle more difficult topics. I don’t see it as being related to Covid although it became more evident then.
Richard Dee
It’s an interesting thought. I wonder what might have been different, if Covid had never happened.
Kelly Williams
Worldwide, there was real trauma. That does things to you.
Richard Dee
Very true. I’m just grateful that I’m still here.