“It Was A Dark And Stormy Night…” ~ Writers’ Weather

Whether or not you write, you’ve experienced “Writers’ Weather”—the bright dawning of a day’s enlightenment from reading a positive plot resolution—the dark clouds of a character’s emotional upheaval—the desert-dry angst of yet another impossible challenge in the pages of a story…

My favorite author, C. J. Cherryh, has said:

“Stories aren’t escape. They’re the living of an active mind.”

And, beyond things like the dry-leaved memories of a tale of impossible sadness lies the “Weather” in the active mind of the writer.

If the writer can’t feel the seasonal and diurnal changes of atmosphere, the reader’s experience will be all drought and drouth…

Then, consider the lightning and thunder in the writer’s consciousness when their Larger Mind delivers completely unexpected material.

Some writers can’t weather changes like this—they stop writing…

Then, the drought and drouth during the writing process—often called a block but really a phase, a spell that invariably leads to more active atmospherics, if the writer writes-through the dearth…

Look at the etymology:

Dearth – mid-13c., derthe “scarcity” (originally used of famines, when food was costly because scarce; extended to other situations of scarcity from early 14c.), abstract noun formed from root of O.E. deore “precious, costly” (see dear) + -th. Common Germanic formation, though not always with the same sense (cf. O.S. diurtha “splendor, glory, love,” M.Du. dierte, Du. duurte, O.H.G. tiurida “glory”).

Logically, a dearth can’t exist without the existence of plenty—somewhere…

Then, the soft-flowing streams of inspiration surrounded by a refreshing mist of coursing sentences…

The noon-day brilliance of the denouement…

Sure, sometimes a writer needs to wear a raincoat, or plant a lightning-rod, or carry a canteen, or slog through mud, or persist in writing the driest of words to keep moving till the mirage of plot-flow resolves itself into the Sea of Wonder…

Mixed metaphors can be fun :-)

One thing about weather—it’s always changing…

What have you had to weather in your writing world?
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