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  2020-05-26

  Writing to fight fear

  I am a writer of fan fiction (informal stories about published works). While I was in quarantine, like much of the world, I was very nervous about the future. It was then that I saw a post that was similar to the one that directed me to this site. EarlyBloomingParenthesis knew that some people were driven to write during this pandemic to relieve stress. She suggested that we make a collection for works that we write during this time, and that we explain WHY we wrote them. As I began to worry more and more about the virus being persistent and immunity not being permanent, I wrote a story about how I imagined such a world might be from the point of view of a child. I published it on Archive of Our own (archiveofourown.org), the Hugo award winning fan fiction website. I have resubmitted it here because I think it fits what you were requesting. I also suggest you check the other works in the collection. Although most of them are unrelated to the pandemic directly, they reflect on how people deal with these challenging times. Some people use fantasy to get away, some use it to face their fears. The introduction to the collection says: "Hello! We live in strange times! A lot of folks have been talking about the importance of fic and fandom communities in this moment. This collection wants to know: how is the global crisis of the coronavirus impacting the fic we write? How are we using fic to cope? This is an attempt to document the relationship between fic written during the crisis and the experience of the crisis itself. Each fic includes an end note about the impact of the coronavirus situation on the fic/writing process. Hopefully we'll all get a chance to process our feelings together and feel a little less alone!" It helped me feel less alone to know that others like me were going through the same thing, and I was pleased that my worried thoughts and plans could help others to make sense of our times, and the times to come.