Well, Covid came, Covid left, and what did I do? 

 Let me think. Nothing, I did absolutely nothing at all. I mean, think about it. I live on a tropical island with nothing but time on my hands, and what better way to indulge myself than to waste it. Every minute, hour, week, year, nay two years and somehow, time had simply slipped away. 

So, what did I achieve.? Hmmm, let me ponder on that for a second. Well, I got older, which could be construed as an achievement but, nah, not really. I perfected the art of taking damn fine afternoon naps. I studied the growth pattern of the creeper that covers the garden walls (quite prolific, I have to say, especially during the rainy season). I baked sourdough bread (once), made marmalade (complete failure), grew some tomatoes (they withered and died on the vine), and drank quite a bit of beer. 

  It’s hot here, and fluid retention is essential! Ask any barman.

My ‘ normal’ occupation used to be a reasonably prolific travel writer. Still, when that pesky virus decided to take up residence in far too many people’s lungs, there wasn’t a great deal of enthusiasm for travellers to hop a plane, which was further compounded by the fact that there weren’t any planes to jump onto. The consequence of a microscopic parasite taking over our collective lives was that tourism dried up, and we all stayed home. 

  Gone, pouf ! All in the blink of an eye. 

 The result? Not a call, an email or anything else resembling a message from my agents offering assignments to travel and scribble about far-flung places that my readers used to love to hear about. 

 Sure, I wrote a few pieces about the devastating effects that Covid inflicted on the tourist trade or the surreal experience of taking the odd long-haul flight during the depth of the pandemic, but after that, nothing, nada, nix. Ideas suddenly were as rare as a sunny day in June in the U.K. 

 On the other hand, management saw her workload increase as she spent her days immersed in a thing called Zoom. To whom was she talking? Chatter from across the planet emanated from her study at all hours of the day and night. So what was she doing in there? Organizing a coup in Colombia? A bank heist in Hungary? A revolution in Romania?  Zoom seemed to be her portal to the world, taking her daily excursions to faraway places while I was restricted to a garden watching a creeper slowly engulf a few walls.

There came a day when my sloth and procrastination became too much for her to bear, or perhaps the moss sprouting from various parts of my anatomy annoyed her.

 “ Have you thought about writing another book?” she asked. 

 I’m percolating an idea or two “ was my pathetic response, “ It’s exhausting.

 “ Exhausting be damned,” she retorted, “starting tomorrow, that’s what you will be doing. So jump to it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a Zoom conference with Vlad, Boris, Sergei, and Sofia, and while I’m on it, scribble down some ideas.” 

 “ All well and good for some,” I muttered,” I don’t have a host of Zoom palls to chat to at will, especially those who send you money as soon as you sign off.

So out came the trusty Mac and a frustrating six hours trying to remember my login and password. It had been a while, you understand. 

  And so I began. 

Days slipped by, staring moodily at an empty screen. The first lines and opening paragraphs were written and discarded in disgust. Ideas! Where art thou? 

 Suddenly a minute spark, then a tiny flame which eventually blossomed into a cosy, warm blaze. I was off. Those empty days were banished as pages filled until the target of 100,000 words was reached, and those two most wonderous words of all appeared in bold type. 

  THE END. 

 Oh, what bliss, what a sense of achievement, I’d done it! Puffed up with pride, I opened up dialogue with my long-suffering editor and sat back to wait for her glowing feedback. Ten days later, it arrived, all four words of it. It simply said;

THIS IS SHITE. REWRITE 

 Shattered was hardly the adjective that aptly described my devastation. Unfortunately, however, management was equally unimpressed and agreed with the dastardly editor.

 That was four months ago, and yesterday, after seven yes, seven rewrites, it is done. The edit is in its last painful stages, but within the next three to four days, the manuscript will be packaged up and dispatched to my agent. 

 The cover design is in the final phase of development. The marketing plan is being conceived by some savvy millennials in a far-off country. Hopefully, the next time I see ‘the book’ it will be on the shelf of my local bookstore or popping up on Booktopia, Amazon or iBook and all those other sites that carry electronic versions.

Whew! 

 So now, life may just return to normal, and I will be able to check on the progress of that fast-growing creeper threatening to swallow the entire house whole.. 

 paulvwalters.net 

 Paul v Walters is the best-selling author of several novels and compendiums of short stories. When not cocooned in sloth and procrastination in his house in Bali, he occasionally rises to scribble for several international travel and vox pop journals.