WRITING IN “THESE UNCERTAIN TIMES”

By Kasie Whitener

For the last three episodes of Write On SC, Rex Hurst and I have been discussing Coronavirus (COVID-19) and the national and international response to it. We started with books that feature disease, moved on to the 35 kinds of drama that might create great stories during the pandemic, last week addressed dystopian fiction, and yesterday talked about overused words.

Our mandate as a local radio show is to provide relatable, relevant, and informative content for our listeners. Many of those listeners are not writers.

In the past, I’ve expected non-writers would just have to go along for the ride with our show. If they wanted to keep listening, they would just have to allow that some of what we discussed wouldn’t resonate. Maybe we should be talking to readers, watchers, and listeners. Consumers.

Our radio audience could benefit from an understanding of just how to recognize the stories they’re being told. How to recognize and dissect them. How to understand their deeper meanings. How to read subtext and interpret nuance.

Writers work through complex emotions like grief and fear. We write because we need to put language to the senses, to describe our experience so that others can connect with it, with us, and so we won’t be alone.

We writers, despite being frequently solitary and pensive, are also deeply social in that we recognize the connectivity that exists across this human experience. We write to get closer to sharing it in empathy and love.

There are stories yet to be written about “these uncertain times” and many of those stories, on the fingertips of the writers living them, are a way of metabolizing what’s happening. I say that frequently on the show: writers write to metabolize what they’re experiencing.

So many of us are taking to the page and to the internet these days to help make sense of what’s happening. To provide context and reassurance. Still others are magnifying fissures and exposing failures.

All while consumers read. Listen. Watch. And try to understand what it is we’re actually doing during these uncertain times.