Most folks along the mountain ranges of the American West are enjoying a classic cold and snowy Christmas Season. I have been working on a Christmas story this December. As it happens, every mention of the weather as I write seems to reflect the temperature, the precipitation, even the wind as they are occurring in reality. Of course, it is coincidence. I am writing, during Winter, a tale set in Winter. Still, how wonderful it is to witness the weather outside make its way onto the page. Even more wonderful to witness the weather on the page appear, as if miraculously, outside. Watching a blizzard roar outside and then describing it in the perfect place in a story is serendipitous enough. But I always marvel all the more at writing about some aspect of the weather--how the clouds are coursing across the constellations or how the wind is wailing upon the horizon--and and then happening to catch the very characteristic after I described it. Again, I know it is coincidental, but the phenomenon stands as yet another example of how so often every word, every moment, feels as ordained by fate.
Describing the weather within a piece can help serve to surround the reader--as the writer--in the setting. After all, the weather
affects every living creature on the planet. It has influenced history,
and it dictates the day to day experiences of everyone and all. Weather plays an important role in many works. It is crucial in many of my pieces as well. As with so many aspects of writing, it illustrates how the words and the world, the world and the words, are invariably and indelibly connected. So, whether the weather storms across the pages or breezes serenely beneath the story-line, somewhere within the tale it abides.
Currently in
Wyoming, our temperatures are barely rising out of the teens. In the
story I am composing, it could hardly get any colder for the main
character. I enjoy allowing the weather to influence my writing. And I
enjoy how my writing seemingly compels me to become more aware of the weather around me. So, though many folks I know are complaining about the icy weather, while my protagonist shivers in the cold, dark night, his every breath drifting away as frost upon wails of the wind, I say "Let Winter Reign."
