How to Write about the Pandemic

Creative WritingPhoto by Joyce McCown on Unsplash

Sometimes in our writing, we tend to overlook the very things that are most evident in our lives. Sometimes we want to overlook those things. I’d like to offer some encouragement and ideas for ways that we can each try to write about something we’re all experiencing as individuals right now, as people all over the world continue to cope with COVID-19 and the changes we’ve felt in our daily lives.

In my own life, I’ve been fortunate in that my family members have stayed healthy, and I’ve also felt the sting of living alone throughout the pandemic. My family came up with creative ways to spend time with each other, such as our Christmas of 2020 where we bundled up in coats and scarves and masks and made s’mores around the fire pit in my brother’s backyard. I’ve spent a lot of time alone, reading, walking, writing, and making collages. I’ve watched more TV than I have in a few years. I’ve gotten hooked on checking out audiobooks for free using my library card and the Libby app. But enough about me.

Exercise: ​Write a poem or short prose piece in which you address some aspect(s) of your own experience in the unique/changed world of 2020, 2021, and beyond as we deal with the impact(s) of COVID-19 on our lives. You can think of this as a journal entry or as a piece that you ultimately want to polish and share, whichever feels most comfortable for you and helps you feel motivated to write.

Here are a few ideas to help focus your writing.

Go small, not big. Look at the details of your life, not global impact or political discussions. Try to focus on specific images and details that you have observed, felt, experienced, etc. Remember to use the five senses in capturing and describing detail.Imagine that you are writing this poem to someone in the future, someone born after 2020 who wouldn’t know what this time was like; your piece of writing could give that person a glimpse into what daily life was like today. You can even write your piece as a letter to someone (or to yourself) in the future.Write about any aspect(s) of your experience that you want. Some questions to consider include the following. Are you cooking more? Are you spending more time with some of your family? Have you been separated from friends and family you want to see? Are you going outside more? How is school or work different? How has shopping changed for you ? Have you been able to spend time on any enriching hobbies or activities? What does it feel like to do more things online?Try writing a list. In a list poem or prose piece, rather than focusing on describing just one particular thing, you simply make a list of related things (or seemingly unrelated things if you prefer!). You can even start with a title that describes what you’re listing, such as Recipes I Cooked in Quarantine, or Jigsaw Puzzles I Did with My Mom, or Things about the Outside World I Never Thought I’d Miss.

Freewriting Prompt: Think about the duality of our lives at this point in time. Change can evoke loss, and also growth. We can look back and contemplate how life used to be, and we can look around and try to deeply notice how life is today. (We can also try to look forward, but so much is unknown.) For a freewriting prompt, try these two sentence starters:

I miss…Today I notice…

Set a timer and freewrite for ten minutes. You can focus on one prompt at a time, or alternate between them as you like during the freewrite. Whenever you don’t know what to write next, start a new sentence with “I miss” or “Today I notice,” and keep going.

What would you want someone to know, or what do you want to remember, years from now, about how you experienced life during this time? I hope you’ll take as little as ten minutes (or, of course, more time if you want, either in one sitting or in multiple writing sessions) to write about your experiences over the last couple of years, even if your ideas stay hidden in a journal or on a flash drive or stored to the cloud for a long time to come.

Even just the act of writing your feelings out and throwing the pages into the recycle bin can help you put the changes in the world and your life into your own words, and this creative process helps each of us keep moving forward as daily life continues, however changed or different it may be from what we might have expected. Taking time to write like this is also a way to be kind to ourselves. We can witness this creative process in action in a poem called “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye, where the author finds that even in the hardest times, “kindness… ties your shoes / and sends you out into the day.”

Have you been writing about your experiences since the pandemic began? Let me know in the comments what prompts or strategies have helped you get your feelings and ideas into words.

I’m very aware that people’s lives have been affected deeply by COVID-19 and that many people have experienced illness or loss and grief. If this is true of you and your family, I’m truly sorry for your losses.

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How to Write about the Pandemic was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.