Quarantine and Fantasy Writing

I’m extremely lucky to be in a place where the quarantine doesn’t put me in too bad of a position. People are really suffering during this time, and here I am tapping away on my keyboard like nothing important is going on in real life.

That said, is it very hard to write during these days. It feels like tap-dancing gorillas are hollering at me from just outside the window, quoting Shakespeare and holding up exponential graphs colored in neon red. If I give them attention, they just get louder. If I ignore them, I’m filled with the overwhelming dread of what they might be getting up to while I’m not looking.

It does seem rude to tell other people about my gorilla problem though. Some peoples’ gorillas have broken into their homes and ruined their lives. Some peoples’ gorillas have stolen their necessary medicine or drained their bank accounts. Perhaps this metaphor is unnecessarily mean to gorillas as a species, but humor is a useful tool to cover up an overwhelming sense of anger.

It’s true. I’m passed the point of being disappointed or saddened by news. Instead, I am just angry. The issues that have dogged our heels for years have caught up to us, and thousands are losing what little livelihoods they had left. The escapism of my fantasy world is a delicious cookie in a fridge of rotting food. It delights, but it brings me no real sustenance. The subtlety I worked into my world’s politics seem ridiculous compared to the blatant, brutal manner in which real politicians have failed us time and time again.

“What’s the point?” I sometimes ask. “Why write fantasy? Why do I still love it, even when it pales in comparison to reality?”

Fortunately the escapism of a fantasy world can also give a reader (and a writer) the emotional tools needed to confront reality. When the system fails a book protagonist, the protagonist acts. But when the system fails the readers, we are left with little real course of action. In real life, change often comes in millimeters, not miles. That change comes too slowly for many of us. Too many are failed by a system that is fundamentally flawed.

Perhaps fiction is vital to the future of humanity, or perhaps it can do little more than distract readers from hardship. How can I work meaningfully while the world around me burns? How can I not?

There’s no right answer. In the meanwhile, I’ll keep reading the science fiction and fantasy I love.