Tag: Pandemic

Characters for Company

Bernice Connell 1 Comment

I miss people. I miss spontaneous get togethers, unannounced summer visitors and the fun of planning birthday celebrations. Inevitable, I suppose, as a result of months-long, pandemic-induced, relative isolation. At least that’s what I’m telling myself.  

Letting housework slide and lounging for too many hours in front of the television have lost their appeal. Puzzling to me is why even reading is less pleasurable lately. I’ve chalked it up to the fact that it is such a solitary activity and what I want these days is more connection with live people.

Amid my somewhat limiting day-to-day routines, something promising has happened that has me excited about writing again. 

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The Curve Ball

Joan McAndrew Leave a comment

I’ve heard about the Curve Ball being delivered by famous pitchers to equally famous sluggers. Some people watch baseball games just to see it thrown. Apparently, you have to be ‘really good’ to throw it and ‘even better’ to hit it. Why World Series Pennants have been won or lost because of it.

            Now each and every one of us get to check our own score at dealing with the Curve Ball that was thrown into our personal game of life. Mine arrived on March 10, 2020 when the Canadian Government said don’t leave the country. Poof, the vacation to Cuba vanished. Two weeks later I was told to shut down my private practice in psychology. Poof, done! Then my three times a week fitness routine ended. No more socializing with my friends and family. My arm and shoulder began aching from all the ‘woe is me’ commiseration phone calls. Traffic ground to a halt. Virtually everyone in my neighbourhood actually listened to the guidance and abided by the rules. Those that didn’t were easy enough to avoid. 

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Writing In The Time of Covid

Tracey Richardson 2 Comments

I’m not sure if I’ve spoken much about my “writing break” in this space, but like we hear with Covid-19 jargon, I think I flattened the curve of writers block-itis and am on the downside of the peak.

When I finished writing my last novel in the summer of 2019 (“Thursday Afternoons” by Bella Books), I hung up my keyboard for an indeterminate amount of time. The old “TBA” as to when I would start writing fiction again. I just…lost it. The drive, the inspiration, the energy. I felt like I still knew how to write; it was more a matter of feeling I had nothing to say. Read more

Our Dystopian Future

Joan McAndrew Leave a comment

Wait a minute—what just happened? I was living this very active busy life going to the gym 3 times a week, seeing my massage therapist, my chiropractor, writing, working part time, knitting and watching whatever appealed to me on TV. I spent my free time travelling, visiting my friends and having a grand old time. Then someone “hacked” into my world and took over, telling me where I can go, when I can go, and how I will behave when I am there. My last place of refuge currently is my home and my own property. 

I have always admired writers who create fantastical worlds and populate them with weird and wonderful things. Harry Potter and all of his adventures, the Hunger Games trilogy being two of my favourite series. My imagination never takes me to such places in my mind. Instead I am fascinated with “true” stories, the stuff of everyday people living their everyday lives. I want to figure out what makes people behave as they do. In my world everything makes sense and there are always underlying reasons waiting to be discovered to answer, “why would she do that?”

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