My brain broke during the second month of self-isolation. There was a tipping point between a grey and miserable spring, the heightened societal anxiety about COVID, and me trying to complete a first draft of a novel that was a struggle. I went from writing 3,000 semi-decent, unpolished, words in an evening to 500 garbled words. 

I’m a big picture thinker. I like systems, processes, and patterns. It’s one of the reasons I write ridiculously long series—they have long arcs, nuance, and complexity. 

When you look at systems, they atrophy. They are built up (think of a new car), they hit peak performance (within the first two years of the car’s life), and then they start to decay (need maintenance until they are no longer repairable). 

During COVID I learned that principal applies to thoughts, as well. How I was approaching writing prior to COVID had run its course. My performance peaked and then declined. 

COVID gave me time to rethink. Prior to COVID, I viewed myself as a fantasy romance and historical romance writer. I never touched contemporary because I write stiff dialogue. 

I switched genres. I gave it a shot. I was surprised at how well the words flowed. If I say a small Canadian town in 2020, you have at least a vague idea of what that means even if you’ve never been to one. 

If I say, the Chaslise of Aliepi is needed for the Ritual of the Third Moon, well, that requires world building. A few sentences here, a few sentences there and pretty soon I’m in the long grass of world building and info-dumps. Then I need to go back and hack that down to two lines. Not having to world build allows for a completely different thought process. Without having to do that much front-end editing, the words flowed better.

Don’t get me wrong. I love writing fantasy romance, historical romance and alternative history romance. And when I grow up, I will publish books in those genres. 

By switching genres, I changed what I had to think about to get the words on the screen. That simple change unblocked me. I was back up to my pace of one complete (but better draft) in one month’s time. 

Routines are patterns that work well until they don’t. Like everything else, they atrophy and no longer suit their purpose. 

I changed the routine of my local writer’s club. For almost 10 years, we’ve met once a month to discuss a 10-page contribution of a member. We’ve done a few social things together, but our purpose remains focused on the writing. 

Well, during self-isolation, we started having a social meeting through an online chat program two weeks after our “writing meeting”. It’s expanded our relationships, we laughed when there wasn’t much to laugh about in the world, and we’ve continued with the online “writing” and “social” sessions. 

I’ve re-evaluated other patterns in my life. I’ve extended by one hour how long I sleep. Most of the time I sleep the entire hour. Sometimes I wake up one half hour before the alarm goes off, but those extra thirty minutes were something my body needed. And I didn’t know it needed it. The extra sleep has had tremendous benefits on my concentration and overall energy levels. 

I experimented with my schedule. This spring was particularly cold and grey and made exercise in the morning difficult. I switched to doing some in the afternoons and that gave me a boost to see me through the rest of the evening. With the summer, I changed my schedule again, to take advantage of the sunlight and exercised in the morning.

There were a bunch of small things I did that sapped my time and mental strength. I switched when I did laundry so it flowed better with my day. I found simple recipes I can make so I’m not always eating tuna from a can or salami. By simple recipes I mean frying peeled shrimp, buying pre-cooked rotisserie chicken and eating with it kale, and no-bake baking. It’s a bit of variety, enough to make each day different. 

What did I learn because of COVID? I re-learned the importance of re-evaluating my routines and habits to ensure they were working for me. 

COVID or not, I refuse to rot. 

You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength. —Marcus Aurelius

If you enjoyed this piece, please follow Renée Gendron on Twitter @ReneeGendron. ‬