How In These Trying Times Writers are Needed More than Ever

By Caroline Donahue — THE BOOK DOCTOR

This week has been one of the strangest I have experienced in my life, and I am sure that this has been the case for you as well. For the first time in our lives, we are experiencing something all together, regardless of nationality or location.

In the past, there have been unifying events, but for most of the world, we have witnessed them from afar. Now we are all together and the world has never felt so small. Let us remember that the origin of something beautiful is sometimes something awful.

How can we shift our perspective to open to a positive outcome? It is often writers who show us the way. We have long held the belief that people will fend for themselves in the face of crisis, but history has proven that this is not the case.

Rebecca Solnit wrote a beautiful book, Paradise Built in Hell, about the incredible community and support that was created in New Orleans after the Hurricane Katrina disaster. People reached out to each other and supported each other through those dark times.

Now, in the case of our need to social distance, it looks a bit different. Yes, there are stories of hoarding and the madness with the toilet paper, but the beautiful stories I am hearing far outweigh these examples. A…