Deborah Shepard Books
  • Home
  • Books
    • The Writing Life >
      • Reviews & Interviews
    • Giving Yourself to Life
    • Her Life's Work
    • Translucence
    • Between The Lives
    • Reframing Women
    • Tributes
    • Personal Writings >
      • Lockdown Journal
      • Travel Journal
      • Elegy for a friend
      • Christchurch - Post Quakes
      • On a residency
      • Deborah’s Love Letter to the Women’s Bookshop
      • Deborah's Q & A With Unity Books
  • Writing Memoir
    • Defining Memoir
    • The Participatory Model
    • Tips on Writing and Posting a Story
    • The Value of a Writing Class
    • From writing course to book publication
    • Your Writing Space
    • Writing on a Theme >
      • Window
      • Surviving a Crisis
    • Reviews of Memoir
  • Writers' stories
    • Covid-19 Stories
    • Writing Guidelines
  • Events
  • About
    • Testimonials
    • Media
  • What People Say
  • Contact

In the time of coronavirus

A collection of stories submitted by the public on their experience of living through the time of the Coronavirus pandemic.
The coronavirus pandemic has changed our lives. Globally the scale of human suffering as a consequence of Covid-19 has been very great. Everywhere people are now reflecting on what this major and previously unimaginable global crisis means for us, as individuals, living in the 21st century. This forum offers a space for writers to reflect on their experience in Aotearoa and to consider questions such as: What might we need to remember and preserve? What has been my experience, my observations, how might my priorities have shifted, in a good way, as a result of the lockdowns? If you would like to contribute to the re-collective effort through any of the following life writing formats — journalling, nature writing, memoir, commentary, poetry, notes on work in progress during lockdown… — please make initial contact through my contact page. Next prepare a page of A4 writing, starting in the present moment and moving where you need to into the recent past and forwards from that point, with a title, brief bio, photo (optional) and your contribution will be added to the repository of important writings flowering in this space.

"We are here; we are human beings; this is how we lived. Let it be known, the earth passed before us. Our details are important."
Natalie Goldberg, Writing down the Bones (1986)

Observations on a lockdown by Tessa Duder

18/7/2020

1 Comment

 
 ​tTessa Duder has written YA novels, picture books, non-fiction for children and adults – forty-plus books over as many years. She loves writing on a computer and gives thanks daily for emails and Google, but knows both the many benefits but also downsides of working from home. The lockdown period convinced her that Zoom meetings, while useful during those months, are not the brave new world, and she manages well enough without the strident voices of social media.
 
Lockdown is a pretty ugly word, don’t you think? Originally it meant confining prisoners to prevent further violence, then was applied to schools under siege; in the last few months it’s been whole populations to halt the spread of a dangerous virus. But I suppose quarantine or confinement aren’t much better and media prefer shorter words for click-bait headings. Lockdown it is.   
 
For many writers, whose working life, to make daily progress on a novel, requires them to lock themselves down, for days, weeks, months on end, I suspect I’m not alone in welcoming the quiet, uninterrupted hours ahead each day. School visits cancelled, writers’ festivals (much as one enjoys them and sympathises with their financial plight) cancelled, talks to Rotary/Probus/U3A clubs, concerts and theatre bookings, all cancelled. True, bookshops and libraries were closed, no walks on the beach, but we shared or re-read books and walked around the block instead, admiring the many dogs out and about. I watched more television than usual, great series like  Bodyguard and Endeavour.
 
Notwithstanding, did others of my colleagues also find they moved into a lower gear, accomplish fewer words a day than they planned? Did they also feel less guilty at taking time to sit in an easy chair in the autumn sunshine, and simply read: I took a whole month to savour every glorious word of Hilary Mantel's third Cromwell book, The Mirror and the Light, followed by Maggie O’Farrell’s equally impressive Hamnet and Becky Manawatu’s Ockham winner Auē.  
 
And the time taken to read and compare the online news websites (Radio NZ, stuff, the Herald, the Guardian, BBC, MSE) has been instructive. The weak links were gradually, inexorably exposed by a hyperactive press: a struggling Minister of Health, a tone-deaf opposition leader putting party politics above his country, a new leader who’s also shamelessly  politicising our current situation (everything a ‘shambles’ or ‘fiasco’ or ‘national disgrace’ but mate, look at what’s happening in Victoria or Brazil or the UK or most other countries!) Other politicians, mostly of the right, trying to discredit every government effort, committing appalling errors of judgement:  leaks, resignations, apologies, social media going bananas …
 
And the media itself in these contentious times, equally going bananas?  I became fascinated by their editors’ obsessive emphasis from Level 4 to 1 on the ability or otherwise of Kiwis to enjoy a beer or a frothy cappuccino. From the headlines and endless columns of comment, one could reasonably deduce that the worst deprivation suffered by this country concerned the protracted closing of bars, restaurants and cafes. 
 
Of lesser interest, apparently, was the plight of families coping with two parents at home, jobless or trying to work online, put food on the table, pay the bills, keep kids entertained/from killing each other. And what about the heroic efforts of welfare agencies, checkout operators, delivery drivers, medical staff and ordinary kiwis helping their old folks, their neighbours, their communities. 
 
The media saw no obligation to keep the populace regularly informed about when the libraries would open, the banks, the post offices.  That German family business, Bauer Media, showed no mercy in abruptly closing down some of our most loved and necessary magazines, for me notably the Listener and North & South, but also the women’s magazines enjoyed by thousands. No Diana Wichtel, Paul Thomas, Jane Clifton, Joanne Black et al, the country’s finest writers. I can live without fish and chips, even a daily flat white, but I’m finding it hard to be (probably) permanently deprived of my Friday morning lie-in treat with the Listener, cover to cover.
 
As the whole world re-examines every aspect of the society, culture and values that we’ve carried into the 21st century and so took for granted (global tourism, working hours, online work, schooling, to name a few), one recent Guardian story took my eye: ladies, ditch that bra!  Apparently we western women in lockdown (that includes me) have been enjoying the freedom of going bra-less! No longer do we feel obliged to hoist our boobs into a bra every morning. Except for energetic sporting activity, the tyranny of the underwired, engineered brassiere, constricting us since the 1930s, is over. The nubile, pointy ice-cream cone look from the 1950s is over. Hallelujah! 
1 Comment
    WRITING GUIDELINES

    Archives

    February 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    January 2021
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020

    Authors

    All
    Abby Letteri
    Anissa Ljanta
    Anita Arlov
    Annabel Schuler
    Anna Fomison
    Brian Sorrell
    Catherine Moorhead
    Cath Koa Dunsford
    Cynthia Smith
    David Arrowsmith
    David Hill
    Delis Pitt
    Diane Brown
    Edna Heled
    Elizabeth McRae
    Estelle Mendelsohn
    Eva De Jong
    Faith Cleverley
    Fiona Kidman
    Fredrika Van Elburg
    Gregory O'Brien
    Helene Connor
    Jane Bissell
    Janet De Witt
    Janine
    Jeanette De Heer
    Jicca Smith
    John Adams
    Julie Ryan
    Keith Woodley
    Leigh Burrell
    Liz March
    Liz Wilson
    Lora Mountjoy
    Margo Knightbridge
    Marilyn Eales
    Mary Elsmore-Neilson
    Megan Hutching
    Michelanne Forster
    Paddy Richardson
    Pamela Gordon
    Pat Backley
    Philip Temple
    Piers Davies
    Rex McGregor
    Robyn Welsh
    Roger Horrocks
    Ruth Bonita
    Ruth Busch
    Sandy Plummer
    Silvia
    Siobhan Harvey
    Sue Berman
    Sue Fitchett
    Sylvia Nagl
    Tessa Duder
    Tony Eyre
    Trevor M Landers
    Yvonne Van Dongen

    RSS Feed

Writing Memoir
Defining Memoir
The Participatory Model
Tips on Writing and Posting a Story
​From Writing Course to Book Publication
Your Writing Space
​Writing on a Theme
Reviews of Memoir
Writers Stories
​
Events
​About
Testimonials
What People Say

Media
​Contact
Copyright © 2017 Deborah Shepard
  • Home
  • Books
    • The Writing Life >
      • Reviews & Interviews
    • Giving Yourself to Life
    • Her Life's Work
    • Translucence
    • Between The Lives
    • Reframing Women
    • Tributes
    • Personal Writings >
      • Lockdown Journal
      • Travel Journal
      • Elegy for a friend
      • Christchurch - Post Quakes
      • On a residency
      • Deborah’s Love Letter to the Women’s Bookshop
      • Deborah's Q & A With Unity Books
  • Writing Memoir
    • Defining Memoir
    • The Participatory Model
    • Tips on Writing and Posting a Story
    • The Value of a Writing Class
    • From writing course to book publication
    • Your Writing Space
    • Writing on a Theme >
      • Window
      • Surviving a Crisis
    • Reviews of Memoir
  • Writers' stories
    • Covid-19 Stories
    • Writing Guidelines
  • Events
  • About
    • Testimonials
    • Media
  • What People Say
  • Contact