By Ian Robinson

Covid has left me remarkably isolated.

Thank God for Wellspring and its Zoom classes.

Few have addressed the toll Covid takes on us when we don’t have easy sources of conversation.

So much of talk is inspired by the human interactions each of us normally experiences, and even when we gather on the phone or Skype or Zoom, we’re at a bit of a loss for words. And that’s the kind of talk in which everybody can share. As for the kind that isn’t shareable? I had no idea how much I missed professional talk until my buddy Nadia called for a bit of mentoring about how to be a good editor and we talked for half an hour about how to balance respect for the authorial voice with the need to provide clarity for the reader.

Snoozerama for normies. For people in the biz, it was bliss. When it was over, I had tears in my eyes.

How many people want to talk to me about the use of the unreliable narrator in modern fiction?

It’s lonely as hell.