Why Write?

There are a million things I could do with the hours I spend writing.

I could work more.

I could exercise.

I could get more sleep.

I could cook healthy meals or keep my house cleaner.

Especially in this time of tragedy, I question whether it is selfish to spend time creating fiction and then time trying to get it published.

Besides the virus which is all-encompassing in a way that maybe not even fiction could have anticipated, in the past few days in Nova Scotia, a province in my native Canada, a mass-murdered killed at least eighteen people.

It feels like Rome before the fall.

This is the sort of blog post that is supposed to end with something pithy and insightful about the reason I'm still writing in the midst of this bad-news-hurricane but I don't have one. I don't have a big picture view on the subject. It's just day by day doing things that seem normal.

I wish I had better, funnier, wittier observations. I wish I were the person who was 'making a difference' in a sweeping, awe-inspiring way.

I'm the person pushing forward with an umbrella in a windstorm, putting one foot in front of the other, knowing that the weather must surely change at some point.

Be safe everyone. Keep your umbrella up.