Writing About the Pandemic

 

When is it too soon to start writing stories about the pandemic? And should we?

When people are panicking, it’s not a good idea to feed into their fears. And if a writer is having a hard time handling it, maybe that person should wait until he or she can see it more objectively.

On the other hand, I’ve seen several good examples of how it can be done right. Since the comic strip Rex Morgan is written several months in advance, it took a while before its series on the Covid -19 quarantine began publication. But now I’m enjoying all those panels that show the characters living through what everyone else is dealing with.

Then there is humor. I bought a book from Audible called Inside Jobs: Tales from a Time of Quarantine, by Ben H. Winters. It is three short stories about crime during the pandemic and, since I purchased it on May 1, it must have been written quickly. The stories vary in style but all are interesting, and the first is hilarious as three gangsters working from home try to figure out how to steal a priceless postage stamp after the pandemic foils their first plan.

But what if someone is trying to write a contemporary novel? Will the writer date it by setting it during the pandemic? If he or she wants that specific setting, great. But the mystery I’m currently writing has nothing to do with the pandemic, and I don’t want to get sidetracked by it. So my “contemporary” murder mystery is written as if it was 2019 (without any reference to dates, however). Hopefully it will still be “contemporary” when life returns to normal.

Another option is to use the pandemic as inspiration for a historical novel with a similar theme but set at a different time. I recently read Pharmacy Girl, a middle-grade historical about the Spanish Influenza. Except for the historical markers, it could have been written about this pandemic. The book was published last year, before most people in the U.S. were even aware of Covid-19, so it wasn’t inspired by the current crisis. But it is eerily similar.

So if you want to write about the pandemic, go ahead.

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The photo was taken during the Spanish Influenza pandemic and is in the public domain because of its age.