I have actually been doing a lot, none of it made its way through this extrusion nozzle though.
It’s kind of a weird world to live in at the moment. I go to work because that is not locked down and it is necessary to live, but aside from that my social interactions in the real world have been scaled to minimal. This isn’t the hugest obstacle for an imaginative writer, especially when you consider the dystopian fuel we have given to us daily, but unfortunately that whole flow is spiced with a heavy dose of anxiety that makes the creative process prone to grinding to a halt.
I have been swinging between wanting to confront and write about the bullshit that we encounter as a country and wanting to run away from talking about it. Why? Because everyone is talking about it, and some part of me has felt that it is too absurd to write about, and that the act of writing would do nothing to contribute to the flow of improving people’s lives.
At the points where I was able I wrote a book of poetry called Black Lives Shatter and a book called Live From The Swamp. Black Lives Shatter was probably one of the hardest books I have had to write ever — sitting there and reading about the violence committed against people of colour in this country was distressing and hard to do in one sitting. The book series they are both part of is called The Saturday Books, and this one book defied that name as being written in a single Saturday like the others. The research I did while living through the stress of the pandemic and seeing what is happening to minorities during this time was heartbreaking. And it is not like I was unaware of the situation or the particular cases, but entrenching in the stories and the details to write something that feels genuine and worthy is not easy, nor should it be.
I have been TikToking like a mofo, and have been more engaged on there than I have been on any social media platform for a long time. I have made friends there — and yes, I mean friends in the real sense, not in the shallow interaction way that some social media platforms can promote. I have published a lot, and I am thinking my way forward for new projects. I have some new authors I will be publishing soon, and have been reconfiguring my hardware set up to make this possible. Time and money are being invested all over the place. Some of the things that fell by the wayside are going to be picked up. I know we have the remainder of Trump’s time to deal with, but the hope brought about by a Biden Presidency and a Harris Vice-Presidency are contagious.