I think it's safe to say most of us have had it up to here with snow. Once a year is nice, twice a year is bearable but this never-ending snow is too Narnia for words. How do people in places like Norway cope with perpetual snow?
The thing I'm struggling with the most is writing about somewhere hot while I can barely feel my toes. I have a story set in Morocco to write, it never snows there. But somehow, I am supposed to imagine the souks of Marrakech when I feel like I'm living in a snowglobe.
I guess our ability to do this - imagine our characters in places or situations we're not in ourselves - is part of the skill of being a writer. I've never been dead but I could imagine well enough what it would be like for my characters to be ghosts. There's no such place as The Church of the Dearly Departed (the spiritualist church in the Afterlife books) but I visualised it readily enough when I wrote about it. So it seems that I should be able to channel Marrakech when it's freezing cold outside. But it's a real struggle. Is anyone else finding this or is it just me? Are we going to be faced by a new genre of YA next year - Weatherian, where the planet has been turned into a snow-swept wasteland and snowmen are the ruling elite. Hey, it could catch on...
4 comments:
I know exactly what you mean - I'm writing about my recent trip to Laos, sitting in a hammock, sweat dripping from my forehead. I can recall the view, the cry of the rooster - but the heat, that's almost impossible when my fingers are working in fingerless gloves.
They said that writer's should write what they know. Then came the reclusive and socially awkward Miss Bronte who wrote Catherine and Heathcliff's tragic love story.
I say, writers should write what they believe to be true, and if their imaginations are up to it, they can create worlds that never existed.
Oh, to be swinging in a hammock now...somewhere hot, not here.
Indeed! Otherwise Middle Earth wouldn't exist. But some circumstances are unconducive. A little warmth, that's all I ask.
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