As the quarantine approaches infinity days long, I keep staring at the novel I’ve been working on, and I keep not working on it. Life seems to have passed it by, turned it into an artifact of a now forgotten world. Even though it’s, you know, science fiction.

I was also reading a well-received novel about life in modern Manhattan called Fleishman is in Trouble. I found it unbearable and gave up about a third of the way through. These people didn’t have real problems — they had no idea what was about to hit them.

And I wonder about TV shows. Grey’s Anatomy has been chronicling the lives of hot, horny doctors in Seattle for about a hundred years. They’ve dealt with ferry accidents and tornadoes and hostage situations and just about everything else — except what hit Seattle in real life a couple of months ago. How are the writers going to handle that? (How are they even going to film a TV show?

These are stupid things to be thinking about, I know. But the smart things to be thinking about are kind of, you know, terrifying.

Stay safe!