Control: Coronavirus Journal, Vol. 3: On the Frequency of Disasters

I, Dalton Lewis, started to write a novel recently, a novel called The Elves of Idanmar. This will be a fun fantasy epic with serious undertones. It’s crushingly difficult to write a novel, but that’s the life that I have chosen for myself. I want to write a signature novel that’s good and fun that I can tell people about and recommend to them. I want this to be that novel.

Writing about coronavirus can be tricky because we don’t have experience: we are uncharted. Society doesn’t know how this will end. Stephen King says to write about something you know even when writing about something fantastic and otherworldly. Use stuff you know when writing something you don’t know, and do your research. I want to do my research about the middle ages.

I want to go out to eat and see a movie. I want to play a strategy game against my friends at a gaming store. Obviously I can’t do any of those things today. Because of this coronavirus I have to stay at home for a month and a half, from mid-March until the end of April. I can’t do anything except write and read and watch television and play video games.

Why is this happening? I think the better question is: why are we surprised. These viruses happen regularly, from the Middle Ages to the Spanish flu or 1918. This isn’t the first time a society has been shut down by a disaster. This is the most recent in a long string of catastrophes. Life is defined by one giant fuckup after another.

We had a terror attack which let to a fifteen year war. We had hurricanes killing a zillion people and destroying cities. We had school shootings. Then we had adults doing mass shootings and killing 60 or more people at a time. Life doesn’t just go perfectly and happily: it is, unfortunately, filled with sadness and despair. It gave me a crippling mental illness which makes it nearly impossible to function in a normal society. I need to live with my parents at forty-two.

Why don’t things go well? Why didn’t I make it as a novelist at twenty-five? Why didn’t I get a good job as a journalist? Why did I get a crippling mental illness? Why did the meds make me fat? Why did my friend Rylan Hooke die? Why?

I don’t know. I don’t have any of the answers. I want to say that they happen because that’s just life — chaos. There’s no order or rules for life; it can often be cruel. I don’t think someone organizes and plans this — if there is a God, He or She seems to have created everything and moved on. This reality doesn’t seem planned.

Thanks, and take care, friends.