COVID has affected writers in many ways. Some have done well, using the time to write and publish. Not me. Even though I’m home most of the time, writing has been hard. I managed to write 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo, but the story dragged a lot and will need a major rewrite. I got to the interesting part half way through the month—and after 30,000 words. That’s not good. But I have a better idea of where the story should go, so it wasn’t all bad.

In November I received a scholarship to attend a Master Class by M. Todd Gallowglass on genre poetry. It was part of virtual Fyrecon. Most of what we did was write poetry to prompts. It helped us think of our characters in new ways by writing poems about them, or from their point of view. We also played around with forms. For me, it was a breakthrough, of sorts. 

I had a really dry year last year. It took me over 15 revisions to get a short story ready for submission to an anthology. Fortunately, I had a burst of creativity and wrote several poems to the theme. Two of them were pretty good. The two poems and the short story were accepted and came out this March in “Wasatch Witches: A Collection of Utah Horror.” But other than that, I didn’t do so well. After that workshop, I got back into poetry and sold a poem to “If Not Now, When” and in January, another to “Space and Time Magazine.”

Poetry is still going okay. I’ve written more, revised more, and sent out more, than I did all of last year. I have four poems out now, and I’m polishing several more to send out. I submitted several to the LUW Woolley Awards contest. I’m going to submit one to the LUW Anthology by the end of the month and another to the HWA Poetry Showcase (so far, I’ve yet to get into that anthology). So, poetry is going okay; but other fiction…not so much. Well, not at all. I submitted a 2,000-word short story to “If Not Now, When?” last year and got some nice feedback along with my rejection, but I’m having a hard time revising it. Same with two other short stories. My novels are just sitting there. I want to go over my two novels and start some serious revision, but my head isn’t in it. So, I work on poetry. It’s something I love, something creative. It gives me a sense of completion, and it gives me a voice for my muse. I will go back to the short stories; and later, to the novels. This year has been hard in a lot of ways, and very different from last year. Last year, we stayed home and didn’t socialize outside of immediate family—basically, my children. I haven’t seen my brothers since 2019 and they live about an hour away. 

Last year, I had one person in the greater writing community go through cancer treatment. Six months out and she’s still clear. This year, it’s SIX. One convention friend passed away in March from an aggressive form of cancer. She died three months after her husband died suddenly of a heart attack. Their deaths shook a lot of us. I would talk to them at local conventions and we’d talk about writing and trains and chocolate. I miss them. My family is going through less-serious medical issues. Not cancer, but those of us with depression and anxiety have seen it ramp up. Two family members have heart conditions that need to be monitored. A close family member is showing signs of early Alzheimer’s. My mother died from it, so we know the signs. There’s more, but this isn’t to complain about the problems everyone is having. 

So, what is it about? It’s about finding silver linings. About finding something you can do, even if it’s something small. My friend, Melissa, has one more treatment for breast cancer. She’s been posting about the process on Facebook. She’s been so positive about the journey. She even took a selfie after all her hair fell out. She was gorgeous.

Even though I’ve seen a lot of problems over the past year or so, I’ve seen a lot of good, too. No, my writing isn’t what I want it to be, but my poetry is getting better. For NaPoWriMo this year I wrote some longer pieces, did some editing, and didn’t resort to two dozen haiku. That’s a plus. I’m nowhere near as good as Linda Addison, or Michael R. Collings, both of whom I adore. But it’s good enough for now. Not good enough for major magazines, but I’ll start with the smaller ones, with anthologies, and build up my publishing credits. They help me do better. I’m also taking workshops and attending conferences. Having so much be virtual the past year has been such a blessing. I’ve attended two poetry workshops by M. Todd Gallowglass and two writing workshops by Wulf Moon. They were so good! I highly recommend them.

As for my short stories, I had a membership to a virtual conference. For the first few weeks, I just couldn’t get myself to listen. I looked at the subjects of the presentations (all pre-recorded) and put it off. Then, the last two and a half weeks they were available, I got swamped with website updates, installing programs, and other behind-the-scenes stuff and didn’t get to them. I did download all the PDF handouts. There were four to six that I wanted to listen to, but missed the opportunity. That’s all on me. I’ve been spending most of my free time listening to audiobooks because my stress, anxiety, and depression have been spiking for the past few weeks. Several times a week I work on poetry. It’s what I can do right now. And I know I’m doing something. I do love poetry.

Last week, I listened to a presentation on pitching and querying through the League of Utah Writers. It’s part of their guest speaker series. I have nothing to pitch right now, but listening sparked something, and now I want to get back to those short stories. I call that a win.

I will get to those two novels. I think both show promise, but both need a lot of editing. I’ll just take it one day, one week, at a time. I’ll take what I can do as a win, and be positive about my progress. It’s all about how you look at things, and about being grateful for the progress. 

It’s like the quote from Roy T. Bennett: “Attitude is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Optimism is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Giving is a choice. Respect is a choice. Whatever choice you make, makes you. Choose wisely.” I choose to see the bright side of life. To see the good in others and to be positive. It makes me happy. And for now, I still have poetry.