Writing the World Beyond Lockdown
Writing a novel in the Covid-19 Lockdown
Like everyone else, Coronavirus is on my mind and how it will affect us in the near (and far) future. The sense of uncertainty frightens me, and how politicians refer to âa new normalâ, the way the country â even the world â will be changed, even when/if a vaccine is discovered. As an author, this uncertainty it makes it difficult to write a âcontemporaryâ novel.
Three months ago, global travel was still the norm, we had never heard of a Lockdown outside Science Fiction and dystopian stories. The idea of social distancing, or shoppers clutching armfuls of toilet paper, and the empty supermarket shelves would have been laughable. The pandemic sweeping across the world is something one would find in Stephen Kingâs The Stand (although his characters never practiced social distancing â the survivors gather in one of two places â with Mother Abigail in Nebraska or with Randall Flagg in Las Vegas.) The idea of having private burials is found in Albert Camusâs La Peste and although here the plague is a metaphor for the spread of fascism, but the daily death counts, the mourners unable to attend funerals and the social and economic impacts are disturbingly close to whatâs going on now. Two months into Lockdown and itâs starting to feel like weâre years away from being able to travel abroad or even hugging family members if we donât live with them.
A contact on an online writersâ forum asked at the beginning of the Lockdown whether it was âtoo soonâ to write about Coronavirus. I realised where she was coming from. There was a movement of writing about contemporary events. For example, shortly after 9/11, Iain Banks published Dead Air. It makes sense to write about contemporary events provided theyâre relevant to the story. And if my contact followed this idea, she would be given daily âwriting promptsâ of how real life would affect her story. Genius â although potentially restrictive too.
There are less calamitous events that place stories in certain periods of time, like seeing characters smoking in pubs and restaurants, or having to run to the street corner road to use a telephone (or shared phone lines in the days before British Telecom âŚ) Events like 9/11 change the world instantly. Before 9/11, Americans travelled across the continent with a couple of pieces of ID and almost no security checks. The New York attacks and subsequent connected events had knock on ripples: there are lengthy queues for intercontinental travel; our shoes are x-rayed, minimal liquids are allowed. To anyone under 20 the idea of having such freedom to travel must seem like a liberal fantasy. And so would travelling through rural Germany before the outbreak of the Great War. But those were the old normal. Like Empire. And Slavery. Change isnât usually overnight.
The novel Iâm working on is set in Paris. I had a problem with real life vs plot from the outset. The first scene is set in front of Notre Dame cathedral. And, while drafting the plot, I watched the news in horror as the flames engulfed the cathedral and then the gothic spire collapsed. However, the only reason to draw attention to this event in the novel would have been if the building was lost, and then it would have been strange not to mention it. However, my characters never enter the cathedral, itâs the square in front of it thatâs integral to the plot, but itâs important that there are crowds of foreign tourists in front of the cathedral, and who knows when theyâll be allowed back? That said, currently the locations that my characters must visit â museums, restaurants, shops, even cemeteries â theyâre all subject to a âfermeture exceptionnelleâ. And when my character has 24 hours to get from Paris to England to find someone, must he then self-isolate for 14 days after he comes across the border? That would destroy any sense of a race against time âŚ
In science fiction stories, thereâs often a moment after which everything changes: the electro-magnetic pulse that wipes out all electricity, the revolution, the nuclear bomb, an unspoken holocaust, the âSnapâ ⌠In these stories, itâs a single moment after which everything changes. Coronavirus might be one of those events, although the âmomentâ is lasting for months. A âlocalâ normal may come soon, it appears likely it will take much longer for the âinternationalâ normal to return, if it ever does. While I donât usually specify dates in my stories, its content is going to identify it as âpre-2020â OR (if/when we return to an âinternational normalâ) possibly, âpost-2022â.
Iain Banksâs Dead Air was published in 2002 and its power is the still raw shock of 9/11. Of course, the ongoing situation with Coronavirus is also still raw, but in a different way. There are those who feel aggrieved that their âcivil libertiesâ are being taken away from them (like the events beginning the dystopian world of The Handmaidâs Tale); there are those who feel this is something happening to other people â those who see the lockdown as a holiday and are holding parties; and there are those tens of thousands of families who have been affected by a tragedy either directly or indirectly.
To answer the question as to whether itâs too soon to be writing about Coronavirus, I have recently seen a play advertised by David Tristram called Lockdown in Little Grimley. I directed one of the Little Grimley plays some years ago - the idea that there is an Amateur Dramatics company that's SO BAD that their audience need therapy afterwards. I emailed the links to the original cast members and it seems that a read-through on zoom would be in order! If that isn't a lockdown performance, I don't know what is.
That's the local effect. However, if the knock-on effects of this situation becomes the new normal, if our plots require our characters to travel and to meet in groups, will we have to say: âAnd this was in the days before Covid-19â as if referring to a seemingly magical utopian past âŚâ? Or perhaps the ânew normalâ will mean all contemporary writing will have to reference the âCovid-eventâ: the moment when everything changed. 9/11 although very much a global event, the impact, I think is much smaller than Covid-19 will be. Or perhaps itâs just that 9/11 happened two decades ago and the Covid-event is happening now.
I have leave booked over the summer and it would be great if I finished a draft of this novel. I canât go to Paris to research my locations first-hand. And, at the time of writing, I can only place it in the world I knew â the world before Covid-19.
The truth, however, may be much, much stranger.
