Sometimes the worst thing about writing is having plenty of time to write. Endless hours stretch into endless minutes, eternal seconds, and it becomes delightfully easy to walk away from the blank. After all, there's plenty of time.
Maybe. Time during the New York Pause was elastic. It stretched into infinity, but one could never be sure when it would snap back in your face. So there was all the time in the world to get absorbed in a project. Unless the call came to go back to the muggle job.
There's also the problem of inspiration. Art may be able to exist in a vacuum, but it can't be created in one. Most of the fun in writing fiction, especially historical fiction, is doing the research. Digging into aspects of a character's life and times with which I'm not familiar, or learning more about some piece of trivia lurking in the depth of my rattled brain. One can only get so far on the internet, and it's hardly a reliable source. So for me the most crushing aspect of the shutdown (in the US, one can hardly call it a lock down,) was the closure of the public libraries.
My standard MO for the NYPL is to search the online catalog for material and note the shelf location before trekking to midtown Manhattan. Though there were two branches within walking distance when I lived in the Heights, Midtown soon became my destination of choice. Within fairly close proximity I could hit the Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center, the Schwarzman research library with its iconic lions at 42nd Street, and in the next block down, the big Mid-Manhattan branch with its massive circulating collection.
That branch closed for renovation several years ago, and was scheduled to reopen - you guessed it - just as the city shut down all non-essential services. Though the NYPL has an extensive electronic library, it doesn't run much to non-fiction, and with everyone stuck inside, e-book loans were, and still are, limited to three at a time.
Now, while the renovations were in progress, I'd gotten used to slim pickings. Everything in the Mid-Manhattan branch was shifted into the Schwarzman building for the duration. Three floors of stacks were reduced to two rooms. Even so, if I found a book in the catalog that I wanted for research, it could be pulled from storage in a matter of minutes. All I had to do was give my list to a librarian, then roam the stacks until someone came up with the requested books.
It's ridiculous how happy I was just to get my hands on a single, actual book. Now, though, when I find the books I want, I have to place an online hold and wait for an email telling me they're ready for pick up. I can't get them all at the same time, as I might have to get in line for the next copy to be returned. Add to that the usual three week loan period has been extended to four weeks, and the books have to be quarantined for disinfection before going out again.
I've waited years for "my" library to reopen, and now that it has, I can barely get in the door. The stacks are there, waiting to be roamed, but all I can do is go in and find my requested book on the holds shelf, maybe drop one I've finished into a collection bin, and walk out again. No lingering, no browsing, no finding my own way to my chosen materials. The most frustrating part is the loss of what I call proximity finds. Search algorithms return either the specific thing you request, or as close to it as they can find within the parameters. When a librarian pulls the material for you, that's all you get. But when you can get in there and get it yourself, you can see everything on the shelf around it, and often find something in addition to or even better than what the catalog search turned up.
Even so, being able to get my hands on a book remotely close to what I'm currently diving into has made a world of difference. Taking notes as I read, I can feel the muse stirring in the wreckage of my summer.
Oh yeah, and that nasty three-day flu mentioned in the previous installment? Yep, Covid. Naps are now a thing.