charles barrow's writing

I'd been giving myself a lot of grief lately, because I'd not been working on my current writing project (WIP = work in progress). I just couldn't settle down to it. The weird conundrum of lockdown is that I suddenly have acres of spare time but no drive or energy to do anything much with it. And that time has been passing, those days have been racking up into months, and my WIP hasn't gotten any fatter (unlike yours truly). But, what I'd been forgetting is that I have been working on drabbles, in a different notebook, all this time. Everyday, in fact, I work on the latest, like some people might work on the daily crossword. I do think of them as a form of puzzle to be solved...'write a story, in exactly 100 words.' They are tricky things to get right, using the exact right words (as I've said here before) and I enjoy the challenge. Anyway, what I've only just realised is that these ultra short stories I've been working on are directly related to...

Lockdown has forced many of us to live more insular lives. We've been confined to our homes, and been unable to socialise with others, unless it's been remotely, online. We've been unable to venture out into the wider world, and so that world, at least for me, has shrunk to the size of a laptop screen. That screen is now the window through which I look to find my entertainment, my inspiration, and my news. But a lot of that news has been very troubling and downright disturbing. The virus is still lurking and waiting to spike again, despite government reassurances. Images of police brutality against another black man fill my screen, and despite an outpouring of righteous anger in cities across the globe, our leaders don't appear to be listening to the people, or perhaps they just don't care, and think they can ride it out because anger will always burn back down to a simmer. It's hard to be saturated with this news and not roil with frustration, resentment, and f...