I’VE been thinking a lot about how the coronavirus pandemic will be immortalised in art, film, television and literature over the coming years.

Will we want to watch films or read fiction set in and around this time? Do we want to, collectively, forget this ever happened?

All of us deciding to escape from it all into the safety of made-up universes where it never happened?

Trying to stay creative throughout the pandemic has been a bit of a challenge.

It has felt to me like there has been two options through all this in creative pursuits; you either create something that refuses to reference coronavirus and the subsequent lockdowns or something that heavily involves it.

The problem with both of these is that you either find yourself with no escape from the doom and gloom of the virus, even in the fictional worlds you create, or you have to try and squeeze inspiration out of real life where people aren’t doing or saying anything that isn’t related to Covid.

You either embrace the relentless misery of the world or you try to ignore it even as it hangs over you like some malignant presence, an evil spectre.

At the start of the first lockdown last year, I did an interview with a journalist who asked me a question which rocked my entire world.

On the topic of the book I’m currently writing, they asked me, “Do you worry your new novel will no longer be relevant in a post-coronavirus world?”

It wasn’t something I had worried about, or even thought about, until that very moment where it became my all new, all encompassing, main worry.

Everything is going to change forever, I thought. We’re entering a new world.

Time will now be divided into things that happened before Covid and things that happened after.

Anything from the old time will have no place in the new time.

I’ve calmed down from that now though and realised that a lot of people, myself included, will be wanting an escape.

For example, I’m normally a huge fan of films which depict the end of the world either through a plague, a meteor strike, war or by supernatural means but I saw a trailer recently which made me roll my eyes so far back I saw the inside of my own head.

It was a film set in 2024 where America is still in lockdown and coronavirus continues to run riot. It looked awful and I can’t imagine the kind of person who would willingly seek out and watch such a thing, never mind make it.

Apocalyptic films and books make me think, “Och, things could be worse.”

The trailer for this film made me go, “My God. What if that actually happens?”

Films are there to entertain, this one though seems to exist with the sole purpose of making you feel worried, anxious and horrible.

It’s a tricky thing to get right. I think, personally, I’d love to just forget this whole thing ever happened.

Purge it from our minds and never let it be recorded for posterity. I don’t want to watch a film where people wear masks, I don’t want to listen to a song where someone tries to desperately rhyme coronavirus with something.

But, of course, we can’t just forget about it. What should happen though is a raft of dramas showcasing the incompetence of Boris Johnson’s handling of the crisis.

Really ham it up, although it wouldn’t need much hamming as it was almost as bad as humanly possible.

Maybe it could be a one-hour drama chronicling what Boris was up to between January last year until that summer.

Maybe it could open with a narrator saying, “One man was in charge of guiding the UK through the worst crisis it had faced since the Second World War” and then show a clown in a blonde wig, bumbling about and tripping over his own shoelaces. I’d watch that, to be fair.

Overall, I think the pandemic could lead to a boom in creativity. I think great art comes from strong emotions: anger, fear, grief, sadness, loneliness, things most of us will have felt at some point over the last year.

As well as feelings of triumph, of getting through everything that’s been flung at us, of happiness at seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

These feelings imbue a lot of people with a desire to create something. Whether that’s a poem, a story, a screenplay, a painting or a song, to do the best you can at making something, you need to pour yourself into it.

Use those intense feelings you’ve felt over the last wee while and channel them into something beautiful.

I say this as my unfinished novel sits taunting me, but I’d encourage you to give something a go.

Just don’t mention coronavirus in it for the love of God.