by Matthew DiRenzo:
If there’s one emotion unifying the nation, and to an extent, the whole world right now, it is the feeling of isolation. As COVID-19 has reached pandemic status and left a very large amount of the population stuck at home, it feels like we have all been cut off from each other. Social interaction with friends and colleagues has been forced to stay long-distance. Collectively, we are all to some degree stranded in our own residences...maybe not totally alone, but surely isolated from the rest of the world. It is a totally unprecedented occurrence in the modern era, so it can be both fascinating and scary. Since isolation is something we are all having to deal with in some form, why not draw upon this unique experience for writing? As humans are naturally social creatures, isolation is one of the most powerful emotions out there - which makes it perfect for inspiration.
Whether you’re a writer in need of a prompt or simply someone with a lot of newfound spare time looking for something to do, consider applying the isolation we are all feeling right now to a piece of writing. Engage in whatever form of writing you have a preference for, though in my opinion, the topic lends itself best to the following forms of writing:
Short stories
Poetry
Letters (from your own perspective, or from a character’s)
Character creation/description (shameless plug: earlier this year I created a series of workshops centered around building characters if you are looking for more writing to do while in quarantine)
I don’t want to set any hard limits on what you should or should not do to participate, I am intentionally leaving it very open-ended so that you can take it wherever you want - why bog down all of this rare free time with rules? - but I have some guiding questions for tackling the feeling of isolation should you want to include it in your writing:
How has quarantine personally affected your relationships? Friends? Family? Classmates?
What do you like and/or dislike about quarantine? How does isolation make you feel, if you feel isolated at all?
If your long-distance methods of communication stopped working suddenly, how do you think you would react?
Can someone be isolated but not lonely? Can someone be lonely without being isolated?
What do you look forward to most when quarantine eventually ends?
To give you a sense of the idea here’s an (admittedly somewhat dark) excerpt from a short story of mine where a character experiences isolation:
He locked the apartment door behind him frantically, hyperventilating in the process. Trembling, Mark dropped the keys and made his way to his hideaway.
Driven by panic, he clawed for the light switch and stood in awe at his history. Newspaper clippings, video transcripts, low-resolution images, all nailed to every inch of every wall. They laughed at him.
The Shieldbearers! Issue #97
They snickered.
“Ahriman” - Alien, God, or Something Else?”
They sneered.
The Story Behind Captain Fishhook and his Nemesis, Deep Six: How Supersoldier Heroes and Eco-Terrorist Villains Have Changed Polynesian Culture Forever
They taunted.
Billions dead overnight due to highly dangerous and contagious disease originating from New Zealand.
He cried.
How Can the World Recover from “the Black Morning”? What Can We Do, Now That Over a Third of the Population is Dead?
He collapsed.
Where did Ahriman go? No trace left behind by the Black Morning’s mastermind, billions continue struggling.
He was crushed by the weight of his failure.
I hope you can derive something out of this experiment with harnessing isolation, and that it was helpful in any way. Remember to wash your hands!