Weather Patterns

It seems I want what I don't have. Although this applies to many aspects of my life, it also pertains to writing - and never more so than in my choice of seasons for a given novel. 

I woke up this morning to find the first bit of snow on the ground. I like winter. I don't like the driving, or when the snow gets all mucky and brown (or yellow), and I don't particularly enjoy that it goes on as long as it does in my neck of the woods, but I like the first heavy snowfall of the year, and I love how the sky gets orange at night when it snows. It makes me feel like I'm wrapped up in a big fleecy towel. 

It's also when I start writing about summer. 

Some of my best thunderstorm and sunny-day descriptions take place in the dead of winter, and likewise I can come up with some fantastic winter-plots during a heat-wave in August. 

I suppose in a way it makes sense. Once more it's writing as a part of escapism - avoiding reality by creating my own. When I'm writing these scenes it removes me from the time of year, the tedium of heavy winter coats or the discomfort of humid-nothing-works-except-nudity-and-air-conditioning afternoons, and brings me somewhere I want to be. That's what all writing is, right? I guess I just notice the season contradiction because it's really the only aspect that keeps with reality. 

Oh, I can imagine that I'm in a world with magic, where a dragon could land on the building where I work, smash in the window with a heavy spiked tail and whisk me far away from the day-to-day routine...but I'm nearly 100% certain that's not going to happen. Probably. 

With the weather, I know that what I write will come true. I know the eventually the snow will melt (hopefully, although come April I begin to doubt it), and some of those days I've written about will actually happen. What sort of concerns me, though, is that I'm never happy with "what is", always looking forward to the next phase. But I guess it's a balance. Looking forward to the future, and expressing it through writing, while at the same time appreciating what's outside my window now. 

So I'm going to switch to my winter boots today, and maybe write a good old-fashioned snowman-building,  snowball-fighting scene. Just because.