I never write much in the summer which is why all my books take place in bad weather. My protagonists are always fighting the damp and the cold as I am when I’m working. They never get to lie about in the sun because when it’s sunny I am too busy seizing the day and replenishing my vitamin D supplies to write them into the experience. I write miserable books in the autumn and slightly more hopeful ones in the spring but I have yet to write anything more substantial than a post card in the summer – I have a writer’s version of SAD – seasonal airhead disorder. I don’t need a light box but an ice house in which to work – a few dark clouds and the promise of snow and my muse is pulling on her ugg boots and her woolly tights – the moment the sun shines she is out of here, lazing in the garden or checking on the sales. I like reading other people’s sunny stories but cannot find it in me to write one myself. My imagination likes a minor key and a monochrome palette.
Now that the dark clouds gather over Richmond and the barbeque summer has failed to materialise things are starting to stir, I can visualise my characters shivering in a stiff breeze and I start to feel hopeful – time to begin.
3 comments:
No summer stories - interesting! And quite unusual I think for children's fiction. I have a pet theory that the traditional long summer holidays have been a great shaping force in children's literature. From a purely functional point of view, they provide time in which adventures can take place. It's not relevant, of course, if one is writing outside the context of children at school, or if the action is necessarily in term time (i.e. all school stories!). But there's still a great swathe of fiction whereby the heroes encounter evil to be battled, conveniently between the months of July and September; they dispatch the villain just in time for the new school year (yep - I do it). It makes one wonder how stupid evil must be. All the villains need to do is attack during SATs, and there would be no plucky youngsters around to fight them off.
I really hope you are not suggesting it is now autun - in July! I do my best (or at least happiest) writing outdoors in the summer, and preferably in Italy. But outdoors in the UK will do if it is warm. So far, minimal output this summer...
Feels like it here, though it was quite hot this afternoon in a miserable overcast kind of way : )
didn't Autumn start in June last year?
Post a Comment