I’m at the planning stage of a few new books, and I’m coming up against a problem. Yes. That problem. The pandemic.
For those of
us who write contemporary fiction, it’s a real issue. Do we mention it? Do we pretend
it never happened? Do we jump from life in 2019 to life in an imagined 2022,
with a big blurry don't-mention-the-virus gap in between?
I really don’t
know. And it is bothering me, because it is hard to imagine myself into the
head of my characters without thinking how they would have reacted to a year of
home-schooling, the possibility of older adults dying, and all the other
important things that arise from everything that has happened.
If this was
a war – surely we’d be including it in our books? How can we ignore things like Zoom and home-schooling
and masks in the classroom? For those of us who write YA all those cancelled
exams change the whole architecture of the teenage years.
3 comments:
A good question. Keren.
One of the big issues may well be young people's belief in and response to any higher-level authority.
I do not think this feeling is aimed at individual people, eg their teachers etc but they are very sceptical about what "young people" are asked to do and why and the truth of all the announcements and promiuses they hear.
An agent I follow on Twitter warned aspiring authors NOT to send him any COVID-related thrillers because the idea was being done to death.
I think a little more time needs to elapse, to offer some perspective. It's a terrific idea - a 'missed' year - but as a reader I would only see a 'COVID' book as one jumping on a bandwagon to make a quick buck. And judging by your post, that's the last thing you're after.
I clicked the wrong field and posted as Anonymous by mistake. My apologies. It was me suggesting waiting a while.
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