I loved reading, though, and spent years trying to figure out what would be good to read. So I spent a lot of years feeling very behind in my reading. I don’t think I was assigned enough reading in my pre-college education. What were the books that were significant for you when you were younger, and do they still hold up? Do you see their influence your writing?

You started writing in your 30s, but I am guessing you were reading long before that. I would miss him if he went back to the old schedule because I like having lunch with him. So now we’re talking about a more balanced work week, where sometimes he’s home and sometimes he’s in the office. That, plus the work day itself meant that I didn’t see him much. He used to commute to work two hours to and two hours back. We are still figuring things out.īut what’s been interesting is that the pandemic has forced us to rethink how we as a couple work. We’ve both tried working at the dining table and it also doesn’t seem to work. So I’ve been writing on the bed, which is a bit uncomfortable. I basically gave up my home office for my husband to work, since he has Zoom meetings and phone calls and such. We just didn’t know how long this was gonna last. Then the debate was over, no more questions-he’s home. After we recovered, we debated on whether my husband should be working at home or not. I coughed so hard that I lost my voice for a week. We thought of it as a really, really bad flu.

My husband and I both got Covid at the very beginning of the outbreak in early March of last year. I mean, how does a normal human being not be affected by a freakin’ pandemic that is killing thousands of people? Now my writing routine is all over the place. I used to: get up-write-lunch-write-nap/errands/chores-dinner. This whole notion that because we’ve all been locked up in our homes it “should be a great for our writing” is utter nonsense. Has the pandemic and/or current events impacted your writing practice? And how have you adjusted?

Elysium by Jennifer Marie Brissett