After the first really deep snow fall last week, I went outside with my daughters to find animal tracks in the garden. There were cat, mouse, fox, deer and rabbit prints as well as the usual birds. Snow is nature's Wikileaks - it reveals the hidden life you knew was there but had no proof of. I've used the revealingness of snow before in a ghost story (Soldier Boy), and I expect I'll use it again. Most ghost stories are set in winter, surely? Is it even possible to write something truly creepy that is set in bright sunlight and warmth?Many years ago, I started a gothic novel while sitting in Cambridge University Library watching the snow swirling outside, snittering full snart. That novel took a very different turn in the end and moved so far from where it started that the original idea is still unwritten. This winter, I want to revive that old story. It begins in the morgue of Edinburgh hospital in December 1821 and ends somewhere in a frozen Russian cemetery in 2002. It is a dark, wintry story full of snow and death and revenge. I've thought about turning it into an opera libretto instead, though I haven't the first idea how to start an opera libretto so that probably won't happen. But it can only be written in winter. I'm in the mood for dark and terrible, it's become my natural medium, and I won't flinch from whatever horrors the story demands - as long as the snow still lies thick to reveal the footprints, the blood stains, the crumpled dark figure in the graveyard, the dead hand as white as the snow thrust up through the earth...
Are you a seasonal writer? Or can you write snow in summer and sun-drenched meadows in winter? I can't. Maybe this incapacity is why I tend to write such short stories - they have to be finished in their season, or hibernate until the following year. It's not just writing weather, it's mood - dark and gloomy rules the long, long night of the winter solstice.
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12 comments:
Not seasonal in that sense, no - I can and do write snow scenes in summer. But I take notes in winter, and save them till they're needed. It's like bottling fruit, but in reverse!
By the way, Soldier Boy is terrific, and I'd love to read your gothic novel. (I do love ghost stories!)
Yes, indeed. I'm longing to read that brilliant sounding Gothic story....I'm not a particularly seasonal writer but more like Kath. Busy photographing and making notes etc for wintery scenes in the future.
Also wanted to say: I regard these long dark nights as an opportunity for much wassailing and lighting of candles and bringing hyacinths indoors etc...dispelling the gloom, I hope!
Go for the opera libretto option! I haven't seen much opera but I just love the idea. I am usually so slow at writing that the seasons overtake me but for once I am writing 'Magic Moments and the dull bits in between'which is set in November at roughly the right time.
Funny, I'd been thinking something like this during the recent snow. I was wandering in the extraordinary Narnia behind our gardens and wondering if lots of UK writers would be writing snowy things just now and whether there'd be a spate of published winter stories written all at the same time. And I'd even considered that I might have to change my own WIP to a winter setting, but then I realised that this would have unwanted effects on the story.
Lovely post, Anne.
Great post, Anne. I'm definitely a seasonal writer - although when I was living in the Middle East, in 40 degrees plus, the height of summer, by a pool on the compound where I lived I did write wintery scenes! So when needs must, I can do it, but now I have the choice autumn and winter are perfect for cold, dark and scary stories...
Good luck with your Gothic tale!
In the last few years, I have started a piece of writing on Christmas Eve. I think I wanted the magic and a feeling of anticipation to infuse my words. I don't know whether I'll be doing the same this year though, as I have a very excited two-year-old and a one-year-old to entertain. Whether or not I'll write when I've persuaded them into bed remains to be seen!
Cool blog! (Groan) Yes, but I thought it was great, and want to read the book! I have actually been taking notes during the snow, as I will be describing snow in the next novel - and it's so easy to forget, and there are things photographs don't give you, the scrunch of your feet on dry snow, the different textures of melted or trodden snow - and the many different kinds of snow. No wonder the Inuit have loads of different words for it. There's the drizzle of snow we had this afternoon, and thin drifting tiny flakes, and big fat flakes that melt as soon as they fall, and ...
Happy White Christmas!
In the height of summer here it is actually nice to try and remind oneself that cooler weather exists.
I can imagine that the reverse is true where you all are too.
With respect to words to describe snow Finnish and Icelandic also have multiple words. Indigenous Australian languages often have multiple words to describe ideas that are important to survival.
Thank you, Katherine :-) I think there will be quite a wait for this new gothic novel, though. It's going to be very resarch-intensive. Still, I have a contact at the hospital who will let me watch an autopsy so I get that right. Not sure I can ask them to follow the 1821 protocol, though...
So many of you are sensible enough to take notes for out-of-season writing. I do it sometimes, but not often enough! You could be right, Nicola - let's look out for that crop of snowy titles in the future.
I like to start a new novel in January because of the new year. I don't think the weather influences what I am writing, but I love the feel of the beginning of a whole new year and all the possibilities
Can't write in Summer - don't write in summer. I just write miserable books always set in winter, usually written in the autumn/winter.
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