“It seemed to be one of life’s wonders,” observes Sherwyn Sexton, the not wholly unlikable cad at the center of Fay Weldon’s lively if sometimes frustrating new novel, “Before the War,” “that nothing happens and nothing happens and all of a sudden everything happens.”

Nina Stibbe’s “Reasons to Be Cheerful” is so dense with amusing detail that I thought about holding the book upside down to see if any extra funny bits might spill from the creases between the page.

We asked Washington writers to share stories, essays, poems, drafts, musings, and other things they’ve been working on during quarantine. Today, a riff by Susan Coll, who is the author of five novels, most recently The Stager.