FLU SEASON - a pandemic novel, part 1

Now that my list of tasks has been completed, I can turn to blogging about my work-in-progress now forthcoming pandemic-themed novel. I have now begun my retirement from a career of teaching writing, literature, and linguistics. I've relocated to another state. I've dealt with the holidays, tax season, and a wedding. Through it all, going back to last August, I've been working on a new novel which is close to its final form as I type this blog.

When our favorite pandemic began in March 2020, I was still teaching. As we headed out to spring break activities, we were advised that we would be going to virtual classes for the two weeks following the spring break week. By the time spring break week ended, we were informed that we would have virtual classes through the end of the semester. And, as it has turned out, I never set foot in another classroom to this day.

I'd been searching for my next novel as I prepared to publish my new sci-fi novel THE MASTERS' RIDDLE, where we experience a story of anguish and redemption from the point of view of a wrongly captured non-human alien being. However, me being stuck at home, I felt the obvious topic for a novel was the pandemic we were just then starting to experience. I dove right in and quickly stopped. I wrote about my own experience with the virus. I also had a head full of disparate ideas based on several post-apocalyptic novels and movies but couldn't connect the ideas into a good story. I deliberately read a few post-apocalypse novels and non-fiction books on the relevant medical issues to stoke the fires of my muse.

Then, as life continued to go on, I got busy with other matters including, as I stated at the beginning here, arranging my retirement. I could've gone longer in my career, but suddenly the requirement for an old dog to learn new tricks in order to continue teaching but in a new way seemed too daunting for me to accept. As fate would have it, this push coincided with me reaching the age, the years of service, and the right viral conditions for me to make the decision to 'pull the trigger', as it were.

Eventually, I found myself toying around with a completely different idea, based on something I'd read or seen somewhere, and thought this new idea might be the perfect vehicle for telling the story of a pandemic - and my project was back on. 

I thought again of that B-movie A Boy and His Dog, based on a Harlan Ellison story, which follows the sordid adventures of the title characters across a post-apocalyptic landscape. Instead, I thought of a boy and his mother. I laughed at that. It would be awkward, I considered; awkward enough to be interesting. And let's make the mother a tuba player. How about that? Yes, quirky. I could work with quirky, especially if the overall theme is serious and our worldwide pandemic fit that theme. (To protect myself from whatever the future might hold, I set the story a little ahead in time from the actual year I was writing it and then never mention any years in the story. However, it's mentioned that the pandemic has been going on and off for about six years.)

"A boy and his Mom and her tuba" became the tag line for my working file. I planned for the boy - actually a grown son, age 19 - to tell the story of his mom, a kind of memoir of her in the pandemic, with all of her quirks. Amused, I labeled the draft file as MOMoir: Mom + memoir. Get it? Hah hah! (NOTE: The boy is not me and the mom in the story is not based on my mother; but I was indeed a tuba player.)

With no outline, I started in, letting my young protagonist tell about his life with Mom and her tuba - and then the pandemic hits and they decide to leave the city, a place where chaos is breaking down society, and travel to the grandparents' farm. That was as far ahead as I had thought it through when I started. Then I literally wrote scene by scene as I thought up each scene. Things happen along the way, of course, making the trip dangerous and arrival at their destination never certain. (As they go, we also learn about the tuba and sample some of the repertoire.)

When I write a novel, no matter whether it is contemporary or literary or something of sci-fi or fantasy, I think of it has having three stories (a few I've written have more) interwoven in it. There is: 1) the setting of the place and how it impacts and influences the characters and their actions; 2) the main character(s) and how that character changes through the story based on what happens during the story; and 3) the interaction between the main character(s) and other characters in the story, how they play off each other and influence each other. 

For "MOMoir" I had the son and I had the mother. They are together almost every scene so they could be considered as a single entity. They meet other characters, both good and bad, throughout the story and each encounter pushes, pulls, or otherwise influences their next move. Then we have the situation and the setting of the story: a pandemic, which itself consists of the viral dangers as well as the methods of mitigation and the government's efforts to both keep the virus in check and limit the population's activities. It makes for an interesting mix - a rich playground from which I could fashion a story of ordinary people trying to survive extraordinary circumstances beyond their control.

MOMoir didn't seem a suitable title for the novel so I considered other titles, settling on The Book of Mom. And with that change of title, and getting to the end of the draft so I knew how it ended, I pondered making this project a trilogy. A pandemic trilogy! More on these developments next time.

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