...is finally, somewhat, hopefully here.
Writing is, by nature of its development, sedentary. When spring roars or creeps its lovely way into our lives, how do you, as a writer, greet it?
Do you get out? Where do you go? How do you celebrate the reawakening?
Do you balance your writing with this sudden access to the natural world? Or do you take a sabbatical?
Just curious.
It was a fucking brutal winter, even down in Mississippi.
I've lost my faith in spring.
I still write with a pen and notebook, so I just go outside for my writing time, soak up what passes for sun in the northwest and carry on.
I take pics of everything coming back to life, the new (old) way the light hits everything (which you would know if you were on Facebook because I post photos like a maniac)
Oh, spring is real. Saw buds today on every living branch of every living tree by the river, little buds ready to explode with color like beautiful grenades. Saw turtles crawling out on logs by the lake. Felt sun on my hands and face.
Snow is forecast for tuesday, but tomorrow? Rain. Spring snow is a special treat.
What about you, James? Do you take seasonal sabbaticals? I find the seasons don't affect my writing too much. In good weather I hike and go to beer gardens and that's writing as much as lying in bed hiding from foul weather.
San Antonio has been schizophrenic lately. We're getting another cold front on Tuesday night. A cold front for us means the temperature drops below fifty degrees. I'd be happiest on the veldt. I crave heat. I'm looking forward to a triple digit summer.
In the spring I like to open the windows and walk my favorite trails. The writing process pretty much stays the same regardless of the weather, however.
After many long years in the southwest, I chose a place that has seasons and green forests. The desert and the wide sky are lovely, but I missed the trees and the snow of winter, the incredible beauty of leaves in autumn. This place has all that and it's surrounded by parks with long trails and I hike year round.
An early riser, I write in the dark of morning before most people are awake, so the seasons never really affect my work, if that's what you call it. I can write anytime and often do. I love it.
But, if I'm stuck inside for more than a day, I go bonkers
James, I lived in Wappingers Falls, New York for one month the summer of 2000 and freaked out from sky deprivation and all the rain. I moved to Albuquerque with my first husband in February 2002 and was there until December 2007. I miss the high desert. When I left home this morning it was seventy degrees outside. Now the temp has dropped about twenty degrees and the wind is crazy. I'm a wimp. When the temp drops below fifty I just want to crawl under the covers and hibernate.
I miss distinct seasons. Probably why there's so much dramatic weather in my latest WIP.
Love dramatic weather. Love to sit on a covered porch during thunderstorms or a godawful gullywashing rain. Love to listen to the silence of a snowfall in the middle of the night when every sound is sleeping and there is no wind. I love to live in a place where people talk about the weather because it's exciting.
Seventy degrees yesterday... snow in the morning tomorrow. Sometimes we get the whole seasonal gamut in a single week here. The only thing I'm missing here is hurricanes, but I've been to a few of those.
I won't believe it's spring until at least 10-15 men women and children have died in violent tornadoes in MS and Alabamba.
THEN I can relax!
;-)
Thunderstorms. So invigorating.
If the sky is clear where you are and you stay up late tonight, remember, lunar eclipse!
I get an uncontrollable urge to buy herbs, fruits, and vegetables, to trim bushes, to rearrange plantings, to spend money I don't have on growing items I don't need, like flowers and ground cover, and mulch. It's a necessary emerging from winter and the dark months I cannot avoid. Writing? What's that? Give me dirt speckled hands any day. When else does one get to pretend to be a god? I make things live.
It's funny--the warmer it gets, the more motivated I am to write. At least, that's how it was last year...
Um, Joani? You make things live every time you write.
It snowed today, Amanda. Not much. Just enough to make the trees and bushes in the woods look like sugar coated candy.
Here in Rural Northern PA spring is a busy time- I'm working to catch up on at least some of the stuff I couldn't do all winter. Cutting brush, firewood etc at moment. And likely for awhile.
Winter cursed bitter and endless as it is here is still something of a break from that kind of work, and frees some time and energy for writing. So my output (never prolific) sometimes decreases in spring.
This spring I'm working toward a June solo show as well, so most of my free time and energy are spent at the drawing table.
Misti- Me too. Today the sun's shining, but it's windy, fifties. Huddling. Brr.
Joani- My partner has been yearning all winter to get outside and work in her gardens too. So far we've had one day when it was warm enough. But the forecast for tomorrow is hopeful.
"I won't believe it's spring until at least 10-15 men women and children have died in violent tornadoes..."
It's now officially spring:
http://www.foxnews.com/weather/2014/04/28/tornadoes-leave-at-least-5-dead-in-oklahoma-arkansas/
Multi-vortex rain-wrapped tornado in Tupelo, MS, extensive damage reported, 60 miles from here.
Gonna be a long night...
Spent last four nights in MS visiting daddy and sisters. Spent Thursday night hunkering down in fright while tornado skipped all around. Today (Er, yesterday, now) four tornados hit my little hometown (Louisville,MS) destroying much of the town and countryside. My family spent the afternoon/evening in their storm shelters as I rode Amtrak back to NOLA, shaking and quaking all the way. No damage to their homes, thank God.
Spring is a bitch on a rampage.
It's the end times...
Yesterdays' reported/discovered deaths up to 13, will probably rise.
30 confirmed deaths in last two days.
Had a tornado where I live. Minor damage.
Stay safe, Matt. I hope you have a storm shelter. I just talked to my sister. Six deaths so far in Louisville, the town looks like a war zone. She's sheltering 4 families that lost everything. They are predicting more of the same weather this evening.
Storm shelter -- No.
Nervous Medicine -- Yes.
;-)
One happy(ish) tornado story:
Spring only just arrived in the tiny quadrant of coastal Massachusetts I live in. Over the past 48 hours all the maples have blossomed. There seems a lot of pent up something in the air.
I've been occupied with my academic book for the past months. It's been surprising to me that it squeezed out space for making other things. But there we are. There's been some talks and some of those bizarre things known as critical essays in which one has to write from the vantage point of an all-seeing eye hovering somewhere above a situation, textual or otherwise, and treat it as if there are no surprises and nothing really strange or bad is happening for an audience of also-observers for whom there should be no surprises not flattened into explanation and nothing really strange or bad happens that can't be assimilated in one or another form of the normal. It's either infinite detachment of infinite irony. Maybe there's no difference. Either way, it's a more than passing strange place to be trapped in, at least for the moment.
So hello.
I hope Spring is treating everyone well.
I expect I'll be around again once I figure out where space is to write in other ways.
Spring confuses me too, but I love confusion.