I don’t have to tell you that 2020 has been a poop sandwich.
The world wide pandemic, a political and social disintegration for our neighbours to the south thanks to Trumpism, a record year for hurricanes and devastating wildfires. It’s a long and unforgettable list in a long and unforgettable year.
If you’re a fiction writer, it’s a dream year in terms of material. I mean, EVERYTHING is happening. Peoples’ lives have changed dramatically. Our daily life is perhaps forever altered in some very meaningful ways.
So, writers…will you eventually write about this year? Are you already writing about it? Is it too painful or emotionally draining to write about it when it’s all still so fresh? Do you prefer to escape via your writing to a land where there is no pandemic and no Trump? That happy place where your characters have enough going on in their lives without the harsh realities of 2020?
I struggle with whether or not to set my fiction during the pandemic. Part of me thinks, how can I not write about these things that are defining a generation? Perhaps defining our world for decades to come? How can I ignore what’s happening right in front of me?
Okay, I get that it’s emotionally difficult to relive these trying times while writing about it. But I worry that if I wait a couple of years to write about it, I may forget important details. Will time sanitize the raw emotions? Should I wait to see how it all plays out instead of trying to guess in my writing? Do I need hindsight to capture the events of 2020 properly?
These are all things writers have to ask ourselves. And more. If I write a short story or novel set during the pandemic, will people pass on reading it because they want an escape from the pandemic? If I write a contemporary piece and I ignore the pandemic, will readers rake me over the coals for editing out the pandemic?
I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I’m going to look to writers who lived through the Second World War to see how they handled it while the war was raging on. It seems it’s a mixed bag of some writers choosing to write about everything BUT the war, while others chose to delve right into it, or at least weaved it into their fiction.
I look forward to hearing what other writers are doing about the year that will live in infamy, or at least the year that will have memes about it for years to come.
How Are You Going to Write About 2020?
