21 March 2020

Lockdown, Day 2

I've been officially house-bound for almost two days now (though I was severely limiting interactions before that, but I can't say I was in lockdown yet because I was still working until the middle of this week).

Ordinarily I would have jumped at the chance to have so much free time -- all the dancing! all the writing! all the music! all the choreography! But after the past year or so, burnout talked louder than the joy of opportunity.

I knew the lockdown was coming, though, and slowly I came to terms with the idea of creating things again. I started with a crochet project -- no-one's ever told me I was worthless for crocheting, so it was a safe but still creative option that at least kept me from scrolling Facebook 24/7.

After two days of planning to do it, today I officially started the rewrite of Kyrie. Not 'adding scenes,' not 'revising,' rewriting. Top-to-bottom rewriting the novel. I'll insert the newly polished scenes as I come to them, but I need to write the entire story out in chronological order again. Doing it out of order does not make sense in my brain and I have accepted defeat on that front. (Also it's much harder to see where the holes are if you're piecing it together anyway.) I have a month-by-month timeline of the novel's events that I'm referring to, and let me tell you, that's been a massive help so far -- knowing at a glance what to plant and what to foreshadow and where to do it. There are almost no flashbacks in this entire novel, so this should work fairly well.

I was telling my fiancé about it over FaceTime today while on a writing break. As I was talking, I realised I had never really verbalised the core of this particular story before. I've done that with some of my other novels, but this one I kept very close to my heart. I rarely -- if ever -- refer to it in real life (though I talk about it almost incessantly on this blog). I warned him at first that he might find it sad (because 99% of what I create is sad and this is starting to bug him), then plunged into it.

After I'd explained the general idea, he said, "That actually doesn't sound very sad."

I was surprised. Two of the characters suffer depression and one dies. "Really?"

"Yeah," he said. "It sounds like something a lot of people could relate to. I'd buy it." He went on to say that he liked how the main character changes for the better because of the story's events and how he eventually stands up to the villain. He seemed quite excited about the whole thing. And for the first time in a very long time, I began to think this might be a story worth telling.

After five and a half years of tweaking and changing and half-living-in the same story, I was starting to think my concept was unoriginal, if not overdone. I wanted it to sound like a story that really could happen in real life, but with that comes the risk of writing something unremarkable. But even the subtle change in the protagonist excited my fiancé, which in turn excited me. Maybe this isn't a dumb story. Maybe people would enjoy it.

And maybe this is the year I actually get a complete second draft of this thing done.

15 March 2020

Watching The Walls Close In...

It started to hit home when the NHL shut down.

I watched as every theatre in the province closed ongoing shows and forthcoming ones.

And then, as I sat alone in an almost-abandoned Pizza Hut, staring at the view that defined my childhood, I received a phone call.

I didn't recognise the number, but I knew the area code. And I knew this was the call that I had been waiting for, that I hoped would not come. As a rule I don't answer numbers I don't know, but I answered this one.

"Is this Kate?"

"Yes."

"This is B., director of (my show that's scheduled for May). We have been advised by our board to cancel tonight's rehearsal. I'm really sorry for the late notice... they're meeting tonight to decide what's going to happen moving forward."

I thanked him, we chatted briefly, we hung up. I continued to stare out the window and think upon my breadsticks and pepperoni pie -- my meal now lengthened indefinitely. It had started a semi-quick meal on my way to rehearsal, but now with that commitment gone, I could sit here till closing if I liked.

But I got full. I packaged up the remainder, paid, and left. I bought what I'm sure was the last thermometer in the city and stared in disbelief at the price of fuel. 74 cents a litre. Just two days earlier it had been 84 cents -- and I had been overjoyed at the low price. To lose ten cents in two days -- over the weekend -- emphasized the economic freefall that had been predicted but I hoped wouldn't come. On one hand I rejoiced at the cheap gas (I'll take any financial break I can get), but on the other, I live in a province built on the energy sector. When gas prices drop, that's because we're collectively out of work.

I got home, checked my email. As I expected, given the public health update that had gone out while I was in Pizza Hut, my other show had emailed and cancelled rehearsals for two weeks. Our shows -- originally supposed to be the beginning of April -- were now tentatively moving till after Easter.

And I am the lucky one.

At least one of my shows will still go on, however late. So many of my friends had shows that were cancelled entirely, some after the final dress rehearsal but before the opening curtain. Mine will go on eventually -- theirs won't.

My parents play a game with my youngest brother while we listen to music and several of my sisters work on handcrafts. I solve several sudoku puzzles before tiring of them. My parents discuss the forthcoming 18-hour round trip out-of-province that they're going to have to undertake to collect my other brother from his suddenly nonfunctional college -- his first year of a new adventure truncated just before performance season (which of course is the best part).

Throughout the night, as I ponder the surrealness of it all, I wonder mostly what will happen to me should I fall ill. I fall into the category of 'those with pre-existing medical conditions,' so my age does not mean I'm safe. I'm not worried about my family except my youngest brother (also has a pre-existing condition). He's young enough, though, that he will be a priority. I am not. I'm nearly thirty. I'm also not a 'productive,' 'valuable' member of society. I work part-time at a small-town sandwich shop which may close any day now depending on the next public health statement and, till about a year ago, spent any spare moments I could find dancing or writing. None of those factors make me worth saving -- let alone the fact that now I spend any spare moments either playing Pac-Man on my phone or scrolling mindlessly through Facebook because I've lost the joy/desire/inspiration/confidence in both dance and writing. I don't have any children -- no-one would would actually need me should something happen to me. I may mean the world to my fiancé, my siblings, a handful of friends, perhaps my parents... but when the chips are down,  I won't mean enough to 'society at large' to choose saving me over saving literally anyone else.

For years I wanted to die. Sometimes I tried to take matters into my own hands. There were moments I almost literally stood on the edge of the cliff, and I had walked there myself. But now that it seems like a genuine possibility -- I don't want to. Not yet. I want to grow old with my dear fiancé first -- to have adventures and a life with him, to hold his hand and sleep in his arms while feeling him breathe. I want to see if I can find my old artistic passions again. I want to see what happens after this -- if society in general collapses; if Apple slows down their confounded forced-obsolescence trend because nobody will be able to afford a new iThing every three and a half months in the almost-certainly-forthcoming economic recession (this was an actual thought that I had while staring out of the window over my breadsticks).

Part of me wants to draw on my artistic skills to flagrantly show hope to people through their phone screens. The only thing stopping me is I lost my ability to see hope years ago, and it's well-nigh impossible to give to others something I can't even find.