Snow? On October 18?

Yes, indeed. I was driving to the store in the rain—and it didn’t really even feel that cold out—when I noticed that some of those raindrops were falling too slowly, and splatting too big on the windshield. By the time it was over, we had a steady fall of inch-and-a-half wide snowflakes. (Two to three centimeters, for you metric folk.)

Just a little joke the warming globe is playing on us, I guess. Or not. (This is not disproof of global climate change, by the way. One of the predictions of the warming of the Earth is that climate patterns may behave in unexpected ways.) For all I know, snow in New England in mid-October is well within the range of our crazy weather, anyway. But it sure felt weird. I was just pondering taking the air conditioners out of the windows, not an hour before.

Our Ultimate SF Workshop began tonight (okay, last night at this point), and it looks like we have a great group of aspiring writers, including people from a variety of walks of life. We almost cancelled the workshop last week because we only had three confirmed students. Today we had eleven confirmed, and one more possible late-joiner. Full house! Lots of good workshopping ahead of us.

“People tend to look at successful writers, writers who are getting their books published and maybe even doing well financially, and think that they sit down at their desks every morning feeling like a million dollars, feeling great about who they are and how much talent they have and what a great story they have to tell; that they take in a few deep breaths, push back their sleeves, roll their necks a few times to get all the cricks out, and dive in, typing fully formed passages as fast as a court reporter. But this is just the fantasy of the uninitiated. I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. —Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said you can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” —Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

0 Responses

  1. Michael A. Burstein
    | Reply

    Good luck with the workshop! I have a friend taking it.

    And yeah, I agree about the oddness of the snow.

  2. writingeveryday
    | Reply

    Everyone's talking about the snow this morning. I'm just glad the rain took care of it overnight.

    Great news on the workshop!

  3. Donald V. Phillips
    | Reply

    I just wanted to take a minute to tell you how your websited has encouraged me. I had a book idea since 2000 and mulled it over for sooo long. I stumbled onto your site back in August. Within days I was typing 5 pages a day and I just finished this last week. I typed 30 pages in the last 24 hours of writing it!!! 80,000 words plus!!! Thank you for your help!!! Not stopping there, I'm already into a second work.

  4. Jeffrey A. Carver
    | Reply

    Michael — Yep, Anakin told me she worked with you. Cool.

    Donald — That's great news! It's really gratifying to hear that my writing website has been so helpful to you, and that it really set off your writing productivity. Huzzah! Good luck with it all, and thanks for posting and letting me know.

    (That's http://www.writesf.com, for anyone who's wondering what website he meant.)

  5. Charlza
    | Reply

    I the workshop went great! Between Donald's post and your workshop, I think I'm starting to find interest in pulling my old projects out again…it's been- yikes!- 8 years since I shelved them for other hobbies. I left the largest as a 67 page word 2000 document. If only the human body didn't need sleep…I'd sure get a lot more accomplished!

    We drove into the North Georgia mountains…about 1.5 hour drive from Athens…and it was 36 degrees and snowing on Brasstown Bald! Brasstown is the highest point in Georgia at 4,784 feet. It was kinda cool experiencing the first snow of the year in…in Georgia, at least. hehe.

  6. Charlza
    | Reply

    I can't recall if I posted this before or you posted it to the blog, but I thought you might like this. I know I love the two songs!

    http://symphonyofscience.com/

    It was so inspiring, I decided to start watching Carl Sagan's Cosmos.

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