a writer’s perspective on the seasons
First post of the new year! It would be disingenuous to claim I don’t know why it took me so long to get back to it after the holidays: 2021 finally brought our long-delayed winter with it. Not just gloom but cold and even a little bit of snow. Its inspired me to do post some tips for writing seasons into your story.
Winter speaks directly to the animal instincts — it tells you it’s fine to eat a piece of pie and skip your exercise — but there’s more to it than your metabolism. It goes beyond the cold outside that bites at your nose, or in this time of masks, at your forehead. The pleasure of standing in a warm room, watching the snow fall, is unique.
So, I thought I’d kick the new year off by talking about the seasons. What strikes me most, the details I come back to in my writing.
the starving season
There is no more immersive season than winter. It’s never not on your mind that it’s cold out there, that you need to plan your day around the hostility of your environment. If you live somewhere northerly like me, you have multiple winter coats, clothes to wear under your clothes. But it’s not all stiff fingers and walking tortoise-slow on glacial sidewalks.
Even above the beauty of it, what strikes me most about snow is its silence. It whispers as it lands upon itself, not chattering noisily like rain, and envelops the world in quiet. You will never experience a more stunning silence in an urban environment than to go outside at night while it’s snowing.
Conversely, winter can sometimes be noisy. Walking through fallen snow that’s been touched by the sun, your feet go crunch crunch as they pierce the crust that formed on top of it. The distinctive whoomp of drifts sliding off roofs or evergreen branches where they accumulated, onto the snow underneath. One of my favorites: the rattling of windows in their casements as a storm blows in.
Then there’s the cold. Chicago doesn’t have the harshest winters I’ve experienced; Denver snow makes our precipitation look like amateur hour, and Maine is basically Canada. Still, it gets very cold.
When you’re out in the cold, you’re under attack; this is weather that will kill you if you let it. A stiff wind on a cold day can feel like it’s cutting your exposed skin. The hair in your nose will freeze and crinkle as you breathe. Cold is dry and makes things brittle, and you don’t just feel it in your nose: your throat and lungs ache like they’re bruising. Winter has a smell, thin and vaguely alkaline.
The season’s barrenness can be stunning or depressing by turns. The clawing fingers of naked deciduous trees, nature’s muted palette. Even when the sun is out, its light feels weak unless you’re at an elevation.
In short, it’s harsh and cruel but beautiful. One of my favorite times of years, in spite of how hostile it is, and great weather for writing.
Next week, we’ll talk about spring, assuming I can remember what it’s like. I would always rather write about a season when I’m living it, when I can go outside and breathe it.
Anyway, it’s great to be back, and happy 2021 to all of you!
Find the other posts in this series here:
Comments are closed