When Covid-19 shut down America in March of 2020, it seemed the world had gone crazy. Nobody knew how to deal with a global pandemic; we took a well-reasoned pause to assess the imminent danger. The escalating death toll was frightening. Medical personnel grappled with the idiosyncrasies of the coronavirus and how best to treat the critically ill. The rest of us barricaded ourselves in our own fortresses. Meanwhile, mask or no mask? Were hand sanitizer and Clorox wipes enough to save us? Was wiping down the grocery bags enough, after we picked them up curbside?
Fear of infection and of running out of toilet paper aside, the sudden isolation turned out to be an unexpected bonus for me. The previous fall, I’d begun work again on a memoir I started in 2005 but put on hold in 2006 to begin a teaching career. I found I couldn’t teach and write at the same time. Not literally, but you know what I mean. Both endeavors required all my attention. Kudos to those who manage a job and writing, too.
In January 2020, I enrolled in Marion Roach Smith’s Master Class that promised: Finish Your Memoir in Six Months! Everything shut down a few weeks later, and writing my memoir gave me daily structure and saved my sanity. I don’t know if I’d ever have finished writing it without the forced routine of the class and Marion’s instruction or the gift of time that Covid suddenly presented.
While everyone else in the world seemed to be paralyzed by fear of contagion or sudden cessation of face-to-face interaction, I learned to be content at home with my husband, our pets, and my computer. As an introvert, I found a forced separation less traumatic than it was to others. We soon discovered Zoom and managed to keep in touch with friends and family in a new way. We built a “Quaran-team” with my brother and sister-in-law and saw our son and his family outdoors, masked, and six feet apart. We even spent Christmas day in our garage, socially distanced, with a small Christmas tree atop the air hockey table. Joyeux Noel!
I finished my memoir first draft in June, as promised, and began revisions. Those took me through summer of 2021, while I continued masking and picking up groceries curbside. I avoided unnecessary travel or meetings with others. All this saved time that I then used to improve my manuscript. In late summer, I submitted query letters and synopses to a couple dozen agents and small publishers without any luck. In October, I submitted the manuscript to Minerva Rising Press’s annual memoir contest.
Three months later, I was notified I’d won the Minerva Rising contest, and they would publish the book in the fall. By the book’s release in November, everyone who intended to be vaccinated was, and lives were mostly back to normal. I scheduled readings and discussions about the book in several cities and locales and found—to my surprise—that I enjoyed talking about the book almost as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Fast forward almost a year. I’ve gotten every vaccine and booster offered—six in all by now—the last only three weeks ago. Perhaps I grew a bit smug. Covid, schmovid. I must have a superhuman immune system. Heh heh. Covid can’t catch me.
This week, it did. Fortunately for me, the Omicron variant that’s circulating now is easy to catch, but not nearly as deadly as the previous ones. I felt truly awful for two days and was forced to cancel all in-person commitments for the week. Again, an unexpected bonus. I’d been feeling overwhelmed by the number of my commitments lately, and this mandatory quarantine proved to be a breath of fresh air, metaphorically speaking.
I’m finishing up revisions on a second memoir about my teaching career with teen moms, and a clean calendar enabled me to put the finishing touches on a chapter I recently decided to add. Once I create a submission package, I’ll begin to submit. Probably in January, after the holiday hoopla has ceased, and agencies open to submissions again.
One teeny upside for me in a lingering, deadly pandemic is this: Covi-pause helped me complete my first memoir and a brief Covi-pause this week helped me tidy up the second one. I sincerely hope Covid-19 disappears soon, but I can’t help being thankful for the time it gave me to finish two books. I have a third one in mind already, but I’m determined to finish the next one through strength of habit and innate stubbornness. No more Covi-pauses, please.
Janice Airhart 