Happy Summer!

This weekend is the unofficial start of summer, and maybe a return to normalness? Normality? Normalcy? We should be able to host backyard BBQs, maskless even, attend well-spaced parades (?), and possibly head to the pool, if they’re opening where you are.  Baseball is back. Beach volleyball is allowed. What makes your summer normal?

Warren G. Harding campaigned on a “A return to Normalcy” after WWI and the 1918 Pandemic.

People all over the United States were shocked A) that he thought a quick retreat to the past would be the fix for an irreversibly changed world, and B) that he coined the word normalcy and used it with impunity.

His two big mistakes were, his ideals could not be sustained bec the world had moved on, and that the pandemic wasn’t done with us or the world. It surged again in the winters of 1919, and 1920.

But the thing that captured headlines and heated debate was the word: normalcy. It was, people insisted, a non-existent word. A New Orleans States columnist wrote “The friends of Senator Harding are defending his language now by saying that “normalcy” is a perfectly good word. Well, so is jackasstical, when applied to fantastic verbiage.” You gotta love writers – focused on what’s important.

Here we are over 100 years later, and we want normalcy. And for many of us, that includes beach reading, and summer workshops and writing.

We are slowly but surely returning to “normal.” But it’ll be a new normal. If you’re refashioning your life, what from this pandemic year would you like to sustain?

  • Have you been writing more?
  • Are you in touch with your ideas more?
  • Are your ideas more alive and interesting?
  • Can you see yourself writing and finishing a book, a script, a short story that you’ve had in your head?

And as more people populate your life – at work, in traffic and social engagements – do you think you can maintain your alone time? Your writing time?

There’s still a fair amount of uncertainty. Are we post-pandemic? Can we hold on to the calm in the eye of this storm? Will there be regional outbursts? How will life become once we have to commute to work, and then also work? Will we lose touch with all that we gained in the pandemic. Will your writing be a casualty of a return to normal?

Just as it was in 1918, we cannot just go back to normal. Everything is changed in ways we cannot yet understand. But if you want your new normal to include regular writing, get a great group in your corner. Ask to join the Write Without the Fight FB Group