10 Pandemic Writing Lessons I Want to Remember

1. ‘Only 15 minutes’ is still 15 minutes

Is it ideal to write in quarter-hour bursts? No. Is it pleasant to be interrupted every other sentence or so by remote-school questions? It is not. But is it possible to work this way? It is. Fifteen minutes is long enough to write half a paragraph, edit two sentences, cut four lines of dialogue. It adds up. And it feels great, because it’s stolen time.

2. You can write anywhere

This year, when middle school and my husband’s office and I were all in my house all the time, I wrote in my basement, in the playroom, in the bathroom, in my car. Less than ideal spots, but if I had let myself believe I could work only if I had total silence, complete privacy, and an ergonomic chair, I wouldn’t have written a word. From now on, I know I can write wherever I am.

3. Write when you’re not writing

I spent a lot of time this year baking banana bread and helping with school and listening to flute practice. While I did, I pondered fixes for plot holes and thought up what my characters would do next and figured out what to cut and what would change as a result. Then, when I had time — see number one above — all I had to do was type it up. It meant that when I could finally sit down and write, I was ready and productive.

4. Write outside

Lots of the things you think you can’t do outside — a winter happy hour, a winter book club meeting, Christmas — I’ve found this year I actually can, and writing is one of them. My backyard turns out to be another one of those less than ideal but still possible places that I can press into service as an office if I clean my laptop screen really well. When I do, I change my perspective, invite the world in, find new aspects of it to observe, describe, and take inspiration from.

5. Read a book instead of the internet

Social media, news, gossip, doomscrolling—it’s hard to look away from, hard to ignore, easy to get sucked into. But sometimes your writing brain needs a break. I write with a book on my lap, so when I need someone else’s words rather than my own for a few minutes, I don’t get sucked into the internet (for quite a bit longer).

6. Control is overrated

Whatever you had planned for 2020, I’m going to guess it’s not what you got. And yet here you are: battered maybe, but also probably stronger, wiser. I found the same to be true of my writing. What I had planned turned out not to be an option. Letting it change, letting it be what it became, wasn’t just my only choice, it was also a creative and productive one.

7. Shit happens

If we have learned one thing the past year, it’s this. And if you let it happen in your work, you’ll have a very rough draft, which is the first step to having a less rough draft, which is what happens right before you have a decent draft, and then a pretty good draft, and then a firmly solid draft, and then an actually promising one, and then one that’s really working in parts, until soon enough, you have a draft that only needs a dozen or so more rounds of light edits before it’s ready to roll. I can’t recommend this highly enough.

8. Cut liberally

Here’s another thing we’ve learned this year: The things you think you can’t live without? Turns out you can. The poetic passages and important plot points and revealing moments that your work in progress cannot possibly do without? Cut them and see what happens.

9. You can go it alone

I don’t want to talk you out of your writers’ group if it’s working, but one of the things we learned these past 15 months is how much we can do on our own. Maybe you don’t need input at every step of your draft. Maybe if you didn’t have to give everyone input on theirs, you’d have more time to write. This one won’t work for everyone, but it’s an important thing to think about and an important question to ask: Are there aspects of your writing that would be better served by holing up rather than reaching out, at least for a little while?

10. Time’s a wastin’

Perhaps the most important writing lesson of this pandemic year is that time is short and change is upon us. The work that’s important we get to someday is important that we get to now. The urgency that has fueled this year, the sense that we’re living in remarkable times and must work hard to tell our stories, is one I hope I’ll carry always.