By MELISSA MARTIN, Ph.D.
You are part of the pandemic story and so am I. Write your own story and send it to your newspaper’s Letter to the Editor. Connect with your community.
The future will find us looking back on the pandemic of 2020. Articles in newspapers will be archived. Children will grow up with school cancelation tales. Each individual will have a similar, yet distinctive story about the coronavirus. The days of COVID-19 will be transcribed in history books.
I grew up inside of books and an ink pen. Escaping between the front and the back covers brought solace from external and internal chaos. Traveling faraway, but still staying home was possible within the pages. With millions of words dancing inside my head, I tried to empty them out onto paper. Swirling-twirling words full of thoughts and feelings. Through phases, stages, and ages, each individual is a story. And each person has a story. And stories R US.
From the beginning of the beginning, humans lived and then told narratives about tragedy and triumph. Themes of birthing and themes of dying – the foundation of humanity. Themes of relationship and religion. Themes of love and lust, faithfulness and infidelity, fulfilled hearts and broken hearts. Themes of what was lost and themes of what was found. Good vs. evil. Right vs wrong. Rich vs poor. Tales of acceptance and tales of betrayal. Anecdotes about sex, kids, money; three salient aspects of daily living—full of drama. And chronicles of plagues, epidemics, and pandemics. Science fiction thrillers about diseases that devour humankind get made into movies. Fantasy, reality, or both?
“Like many others who turned into writers, I disappeared into books when I was very young, disappeared into them like someone running into the woods. What surprised and still surprises me is that there was another side to the forest of stories and the solitude, that I came out that other side and met people there. Writers are solitaries by vocation and necessity. I sometimes think the test is not so much talent, which is not as rare as people think, but purpose or vocation, which manifests in part as the ability to endure a lot of solitude and keep working. Before writers are writers they are readers, living in books, through books, in the lives of others that are also the heads of others, in that act that is so intimate and yet so alone.”
– Rebecca Solnit, in her essay “Flight, from The Faraway Nearby”
One does not need to be a professional writer to compose her/his own account of the pandemic of 2020. Just follow the basics. A story needs to have a narrative arc (a beginning, middle, and end). The best character arc reveals an inner transformation, not just a change in circumstances.
You are part of the pandemic story and so am I. Write your own story and send it to your newspaper’s Letter to the Editor. Let your voice be heard! Stories R US.
Melissa Martin, Ph.D. is an author, columnist, educator, and therapist. She lives in Ohio.
