Writer's Notebook - James Rafferty Blog

Change of Year, Change of Seasons

In New England, this is a time of year when one tends to wake up in the dark, experience a shortened day, then drive home in the dark.  No small wonder that all of this darkness takes a toll on the psyche. But as of the winter solstice, the days began to get a little longer, even though the visible effects are hard to see so far. 

Some effects of the change of seasons are much more obvious.  Here's a glimpse of Fall from a trip we took to North Carolina in late November.  

 
Just after Christmas, we went from a late Fall look to mid-winter.  Here's what it looked like in our neighborhood during the height of the Blizzard of 2010.  

 
Viva la difference. 

For writers, the change of seasons can be a tool, a powerful metaphor for the constant process of renewal that goes on from season to season, year to year and even longer cycles.  As the seasons change, the life of a character changes as well.  In New England, the winter season presents a built -in set of hardships to be overcome, giving characters a chance to see how they'll cope during tough times.  For New Englanders, even the summer can be challenge, since the memories of the darker seasons to come never totally recede from one's mind.  By contrast, there's little of this going on for a resident of southern California or Florida, so they need to come up with their own touchstones to mark change.  

I personally like the changes in the season and my outdoor pastimes change from walking, biking and swimming in the summer to cross country skiing in the winter.  The winter is also a time to spend more time indoors, tending to all of those things that often get neglected when the weather outside is just too good to give up. For a writer, this can be the time to clean up the clutter from your desktop and spend more time on working on manuscripts. For the reader, it's a great time to go to the library or your local bookstore and get those books you've been promising yourself.  

So what do you think about the change of seasons and the move to a new year?  Is this a time you savor or one you hope you'll soon be past?    

Writer's Notebook: 'Tis the Season

I'm at home after a busy December in the workplace and am feeling grateful for the chance to gather with family and celebrate Christmas and the New Year.  We have visitors and thought we might go out for dinner before attending an evening service, but all three of the restaurants we called were closing by 4:00 pm.   So we'll prepare our own dinner and then I'll tend to my role as a member of the chancel choir for our church service.  

During the past month, I've pushed a new product release out the door at work, but in the nooks and crannies of the evenings, I also wrote the latest chapters of my work in progress, a second novel.  My tools for the latter quest have been simple: a notebook and a pen.  Later on I'll enter this text into my PC, but I do a lot of writing while travelling, so the simplicity of being able to write without concern for power outlets, the vagaries of the Windows OS and the latest instructions from flight attendants has a distinct appeal.   

As I look back on my writing this year, I filled up over half of a three subject notebook that I purchased last summer.  Just a couple of days ago, I stopped in at the local Staples and bought another notebook, the third one for this particular novel.  I'm past the halfway point, so I expect I'll fill this one and perhaps get one more for the final chapters.  

Lest one think I'm strictly old school with respect to my writing tools, I also do a lot of writing on the PC and typically do all of my editing there.  I wrote earlier this year about my favorite new software tool OneNote here and here.  OneNote continues to help me organize the chaos of my active projects both at work and home.  They have a useful password feature, so OneNote is also a fine repository for the hundred or so usercodes and passwords that attend to one's online life.  It's very lightweight compared to Microsoft Word, so I use it to capture notes on my writing, ideas for future stories and even snatches of dialogue for chapters that haven't been written yet. 

Much of the computing buzz this year is about netbooks and tools for online reading such as the Kindle.  As a writer and reader, I'd love to have better tools that combine writing and mobility and I expect I'll go in that direction more and more.  However, in the year of the new normal, with tightened budgets and a son in his first year of college, I'm being much more careful about my financial outlays.  

I'll close this piece with a photo of my writer's library, a set of reference books I can turn to when I want a refresher on editing or want to clarify an arcane point of syntax or punctuation.  I took the time to get organized in this way recently and it feels good to have rescued these books from dusty exile in other parts of our house.  

This is a great time to be a writer as the possibilities for creating prose and bringing it to completion are so much robust than the early days of my business career, when word processors were $10,000 dedicated machines and most writers could only dream of an electronic tool that would collect text as it was written and allow for editing without the pain of re-typing a manuscript.  

If you're a writer, what are your favorite tools of creation?  Have you gone more electronic or mobile recently, and if so, how have you done it?  If you're a reader, are you reading books or checking out magazines online?  

And finally, let me offer my best wishes for the holiday season however you may celebrate it.  I've enjoyed the interaction with readers of the James Rafferty Blog this year and have gotten an excellent response to my re-branding of the blog to focus on writing and travelling.  Thanks for reading and commenting.  I also want to thank my online writing group, The Writin' Wombats who reside on Gather.com and many other places.  The wombats have been an amazing resource as friends, sounding boards, writers, critique partners and readers.  They continue to enrich my writing and personal life. 

Writer's Notebook: Signs of the Seasons

Fall in New England is one of my favorite seasons.  I've lived in New England most of my life, but never tire of the variety this season brings to us. 

Yesterday, I rode with a business colleague through New Hampshire and Vermont.  It was Columbus Day, sometimes celebrated as a holiday in the United States, and often touted as a great weekend for viewing foliage.  Well, in most years, you won't see much but bare trees in Northern New England by the time that weekend rolls around.  Happily, this year is an exception.  We had copious amounts of rain in the Spring and enough during the summer so that the foliage this year is rich in colors of gold, harvest brown, and pumpkin orange, and many shades in between.  Smoke from wood fireplaces drifts in the air, stirring ancient urges to gather around the warmth.  As the temperature drops, we develop a taste for hearty meals such as stews, curries, and ragouts, washed down by mugs of hot cider, cocoa and pints of auburn ale. 

Frost warnings permeate the weather forecasts, but often the days are still warm enough to enjoy our favorite outdoor activities, be it tossing a football, riding a bike, hiking a trail or walking with your pet. 

For a writer, autumn presents backgrounds that tickle the senses, but the season also works as a metaphor for the passing of years and the progression toward mortality.  I've included scenes of Fall in my novels and the nip in the air, variegated colors of leafy canopies and harvest aromas can transport the reader directly to that destination, bringing it alive. 

As a reader, how to you react to seasons in writing?  Do authors draw you in with the vivid descriptions of the change that Autumn or Winter brings?  Or is there a hidden terror in these periodic changes of life and its rhythms? 

If you are a writer or another type of artist, how important are the seasons in your work?  Do they inspire you?  Do they transport your characters to new realizations or spiritual yearnings?  Let's talk about the seasons and how they affect your art.