It is not the end of the world. It is not the end of civilization. But some stuff is DIFFERENT right now, in March of 2020, than any of us might have expected a year ago. (At least any of us who do not write dystopian science fiction and/or catastrophizing think pieces.)
From me as a writer, the onset of COVID-19 has had a direct effect. Quite different from the direct effect on my work life: my entire office, one of many parts of a very large law firm, has been put on remote (work-from-home) status. That meant I had to drastically upgrade my home workstation, at short notice, because the 7-year-old laptop with the broken keyboard was not going to get the job done. I now have a powerful desktop computer (which is actually on the floor) and a 34-inch ultrawide monitor that enables me to see all six of the work applications I typically have open at one time. I’ve been working my usual 7.5 hour days with no eyestrain, no neck strain, and full productivity. The new equipment cost me roughly two weeks’ net pay. That is not tax-deductible and my employer won’t reimburse me. It is simply the consequence of something that was once proffered as a benefit - after six months you can work from home one day a week! - suddenly becoming a condition of employment. (They would have issued me a laptop. I would have been blind in a day.)
At any rate, I’m not sorry to have the new gear; I wanted a new computer anyway; and lordy I love this monitor. I even like the keyboard that came with the thing. I’m still writing a lot, and because I now have 2.5 more hours of life per day (the hours I previously spent commuting) I am also reading a lot.
But back to me as a writer, which is what this website is all about. I have a new novel prepped to launch on the first Sunday in April (Andy & Victor Book 3, a.k.a. NEVER ENOUGH). That plan has not changed. The action in the novel goes through December of 2019 (which is why, even though the book was substantially finished last summer, it couldn’t be published till roughly now because I needed to let the present catch up with me).
However, a couple of other things I’ve written need revision. When I wrote them, we weren’t seeing an unprecedented-in-our-lifetime global pandemic.
A novella I was planning to launch in May now cannot be launched until later. Why? Because that novella (called TRIPLE X; it’s a M/M romance set mostly in London, involving a pornographer/painter and a butcher/drag queen) has action that occurs in 2020, and obviously the state of the world is rather different from how I wrote it in December.
I will also need to revise ‘Andy & Victor Book 4,’ a.k.a. UNMASKED. This 90,000-word novel was mostly finished in February. All of its action occurs in 2020. I’ve already tweaked some scenes occurring in March 2020, but the rest of it is kind of up in the air because we honestly can’t predict what will be happening the rest of this year. And this is romance, not science fiction.
At least that revision won’t affect my publication timeline. And I still have a new novella to launch in May. It’s called NO MORE WORDS and it’s a M/F romance about an actor and a project manager, featuring dirty talk and cross-dressing.
Keep reading, y’all - the future may be a different shape than we expected, but it will arrive.