Un-seasonal Writing
Have you ever received advice about embracing the seasons in order to enhance your writing? It is not uncommon to find ourselves reaching for darker themes for our stories as we enter the autumn, or indulging ourselves in ghosts and ghouls during the winter, while the spring lightens our steps and our words, and summer brings with it the urge for adventure and travel, fun and romance.
I’ve written according to the seasons for years, and there is something to be said for tuning into nature, and the changes that are being wrought around you day in, day out. Sometimes, those small observations about a season add sparkle to a piece of writing; the swooping of swifts to announce the arrival of spring can add a tiny dab of colour into your writing that lifts it up and gives the reader a fuller experience, despite it being barely noticeable. Commercially, we know that at the end of the year the bookshop shelves will be heavy with the new crop of Christmas novels, seasonal cookbooks, children’s stocking-filler books and themed gifts, while light-hearted romances and page-turning thrillers will be on display in the summer at airports around the world to add flavour to the escapism of a holiday.
Seasonal writing should feel like this in summer…
Okay, so that’s noted. But what about that project that is set in the height of a summer heatwave and has to be finished while the heating is on full blast and there’s still frost on the ground mid-afternoon? There’s little in the world about you to tune into at that point and yet deadlines are looming. Or, if like me, you have no particular deadline you just want to finish at least the first draft this side of the decade, then you might not have a choice but to write un-seasonally.
My current work in progress is an anthology of stories set at Christmas. I’m not going to give away anything else about these except I have enjoyed writing them, developing the characters and the different plots, deciding on point of view and voice, and even working on the more technical matters such as whether to have an overarching theme or any thread that might link them all in some way. Still decisions to be made there, but the hardest thing I’m finding is keeping up writing momentum in July.
It is, of course, partly because we are slaves to the power of our imaginations that we are writers, and it is because those characters and stories are milling around in our heads demanding to be let out and onto the page that we write in the first place. So, yes, in July, in a heatwave, I can write about dark afternoons, the bite of early morning frost, the need to pull on a second sweater and swathe yourself in a scarf before leaving the house, because my imagination is pretty fertile and because I’ve lived it in the past. But right now, with the temperature outdoors at 28 degrees celsius, no air-conditioning and humidty at 90%, I’ve got to admit that writing out of season can be tough. I write about hot chocolate and in the meantime am sipping on iced lemonade; my characters are baking gingerbread or popping the turkey in the oven, and it’s so hot I don’t even fancy eating; I linger over words describing the ache in your fingers and toes after walking in the snow while I am literally sweating at my computer. Tuning into the world about me right now is as un-inspirational for my writing as it gets and I have to remind myself that professional writers will be turning in articles about Christmas more or less now, if they haven’t done so already, so that publishers can prepare for the Christmas issues of their magazines (these people are amazing).
Still, the work in progress demands to be completed - I have a first draft of the collection written and these now need very thorough and ruthless revision. So, on with the fans, off with the daylight (shutting the curtains and keeping the sun out at least stops the room from getting warmer than it has to, and gives a very vague impression of the darkness of winter afternoons) on with the Christmas playlist (my neighbours must think I’m completely crazy as I sing along) and here goes.
Having to pretend it’s Christmas…