Editor’s note: What activities and practices have gotten us through the pandemic? What have we learned about ourselves during this dismal time? Baltimore Watchdog reporters wrote personal essays and interviewed people on this topic. Here’s what they found.
By Isaac Donsky
When the COVID-19 pandemic began in March, I became bored sitting around the house all day. There was not much to do outside of attending virtual classes and going to work. I needed an activity that could take my mind off the craziness that was 2020.
One of the few constants that I found during the pandemic was live sports. While most sports were suspended during the pandemic, one that kept going after a short break was NASCAR.
I have been a fan of NASCAR since I was 9. Both of my parents covered the sport during the 1980s and had attended several races. My mom got to interview Richard Petty when she worked in Daytona Beach, Florida, and my father spent a weekend profiling Kyle Petty. When I was a kid, I was introduced to the sport, and I became hooked instantly.
Around the time that the pandemic began, I was in my fourth year at Towson and had just changed my major from political science to mass communication. I wanted to do something in sports journalism and had begun to write for The Towerlight before the pandemic cancelled live sports. As the summer came to an end, I realized that there was a way for me to connect my two loves: NASCAR and writing.
In late August, I sent an email to the editor of The Towerlight with my pitch. I wanted to start a NASCAR-specific column for the student newspaper. NASCAR is not extremely popular in the Northeast, but my column wasn’t going to be aimed at hardcore fans. It was aimed at newcomers: People who have heard about the sport but have never watched a race. My goal was to create a column that could introduce a new audience to what I called ‘The Great American Drama’.
And it worked. The Towerlight accepted my pitch and I began writing my column every week for the rest of 2020. Each week I would peruse the NASCAR storylines and news sites, looking for anything that I could write about. My columns have ranged in topic, from stories about drivers succeeding and my own feelings concerning the younger generation of fans, to the more controversial aspects of the sports, such as the Confederate flag ban and the impact of cyber bullying.
I’ll be the first to admit that it hasn’t been a walk in the park. Some weeks I had to skip writing a column because I was bogged down with schoolwork or had run out of ideas. Other times I found myself doubting the quality of my work. But I kept at it because it was the only thing keeping me sane during the pandemic.
What I found is that having something that is expected of my every week gave my life structure during the pandemic. It prevents me from losing my mind when another outbreak of cases occurs. And it has allowed me to explore my passions more deeply than ever before.
By Cyan Thomas
I created a story called Nightfall about a young princess named Noelle who is forced to take over her country, North Ardern, after her parents are assassinated. It is one of my proudest moments as a writer, and it happened only a few months ago, in the thick of quarantine. I have been fighting off laziness ever since the pandemic hit, and mapping that story out helped me realize how efficient I can be when I put my mind to something.
Writing is my first love. It’s always been something that I’ve truly enjoyed doing, and anyone who knows me knows my face lights up when I talk about creative writing. Ever since I’ve been in college, though, I haven’t had nearly as much time to read or write as I’d like. However, towards the end of last year, I made a resolution to start working on fleshing out the story ideas I had been thinking up over the past few years. I set aside time for myself to write at least once a week, and I usually spend that time mapping out stories, answering story prompts or coming up with new ideas.
The first time I started working on outlining Nightfall’s story beats, I was extremely unproductive. I was determined to get to work on the plotlines of the story, but I just couldn’t focus. I vividly remember staring at my computer, typing approximately one bullet point every 10 minutes. I had to take a step back and realize I had writer’s block, which is the same affliction that had been plaguing me in years past. Eventually, I came to the realization that my writer’s block came from distraction due to the stress of the pandemic.
Quarantine helped me realize that to achieve my writing goals, I needed to isolate myself and stop overthinking. In doing so, I was able to make strides in my writing.
Eventually, I started making storyboards – or the closest thing I could get to it. Storyboarding is typically a technique used by film and TV writers, and I learned it from a screenwriting class. I applied that technique to my stories, and inspiration struck. I took a cardboard box from the storage room in my basement and started taping index cards to it. I wrote major story beats on it so that I could visualize the events of the story. For multiple days in a row, I was sprawled out onto the floor of my bedroom with the cardboard box laid out in front of me. On hands and knees, I was armed with sharpies, sticky notes, and pencils. I was more dedicated than I had ever been to see my stories come to life, and I was so proud of myself when I got it done.
Since then, I’ve been on a roll. I have fleshed out multiple other story ideas that I’ve been inspired to continue with since quarantine, and it’s helped me realize two things about myself. First, I’ve realized that when I’m writing creatively, I have to visualize my stories to make them complete. The storyboarding is the most fun I’ve ever had creating a story, and the swiftness with which it came to life helped me understand that I always need to storyboard my works. Second, focusing on writing during this pandemic has made me realize that I’m very good at it, and I should embrace that. I don’t think I’m good at much, but the way my brain works when I’m creating stories makes me euphoric, and if one good thing has come out of this pandemic, it’s that growth.