east coast snow day

School has been canceled this afternoon. It doesn't affect me because I don't have Wednesday classes, but I find it rather entertaining. It was snowing lightly this morning, then it warmed up and turned to rain, and now that rain is starting to freeze. All classes after 2:30 were canceled because of expected poor driving conditions. I suppose I can understand that--the traffic in this city is bad enough without putting ice under the tires of people who aren't used to it. Even so, it seems surreal that a snow day could be called with very little actual snow, and temperatures hovering around the freezing point.

I have actually spent the entire day in my room so far. I'm not feeling the best, and I had no responsibilities today, so I took it easy. My breakfast was so late, I didn't feel the need to go out and get lunch, so I had afternoon tea to tide me over until dinner. And in the meantime, I practiced my violin for just under an hour and wrote 1000 words on my next novel (finally! that opening scene has been in my head for ages!).

The biggest problem concerning my writing has been the problem of inertia. After I finally finished writing and editing the first novel, I took a break, and never really got back into it. I wrote all sorts of other things in the meantime, but I couldn't make myself leap into another novel. I lost all momentum in that direction and just sat, waiting for a push that I knew I would resent needing. The last weekend before I came back to Boston I met with my writer friends in Sioux Falls. They've all been making good progress (Dale had a short story bought by a SFF magazine!), and I've produced nothing. Granted, my life is busier than theirs what with grad school and all, but I still felt guilty talking with them about my lack of progress. But amazingly, they all understand. They didn't lecture me, but they did give me an assignment. Dale wanted me to write a chapter, and Caleb bumped it up and said I need to finish multiple chapters before the end of the semester. If I can have a few more days like today, that might actually be possible, which is a very good feeling.

That was one of the things that helped push me to start writing again. Another is a book my parents gave me for Christmas (at my request) called The Writing Life, by author Annie Dillard. I haven't read much of her other work, but I very much enjoy this book. She writes very candidly about what a struggle it is to be a writer. And she writes about famous authors who *didn't* write a novel every month. I find nothing more depressing than hearing about people like Stephen King who write 2000+ words a day without fail and continually produce magic. For normal people, even "normal" writers, it isn't always easy and is more often a struggle attempting to produce something magical. One passage I read today was especially helpful:

"It makes more sense to write one big book--a novel or nonfiction narrative--than to write many stories or essays. Into a long, ambitious project can fit or pour all you possess and learn. A project that takes five years will accumulate those years; inventions and richness. Much of those years' reading will feed the work. Further, writing sentences is difficult whatever their subject. It is no less difficult to write sentences in a recipe than sentences in Moby-Dick. So you might as well write Moby-Dick. Similarly, since each original work requires a unique form, it is more prudent to struggle with the outcome of only one form--that of a long work--than to struggle with the many forms of a collection."

Well, that's a relief. I've been debating with myself for months whether I should try my hand at short stories again and have more material to submit. But I'm just not nearly as good at that form. Long works hold my passion, so I may as well dive headfirst into another novel if I'm going to write anything at all.

On a somewhat related tangent: I've been reading Genesis lately, and today I was reading the story of Jacob working for Laban to "earn" his wives. I worked close to 7 years for my first novel, do you suppose I'll have to work another 7 on Rachael?

One last thing to mention, though I know this is getting painfully long. My last piece of inspiration comes from the animated movie Kevin and Beth gave me for Christmas. Whisper of the Heart is about a girl who wants to be a writer and follows her dreams. I finally watched it last night, and thoroughly enjoyed it (even though the always-anticipated magical happenings never actually happened--I think this is the first movie Miyazaki has made without any). I've never been so influenced by the cartoons I watch, and now it's happened twice in one week. I suppose I should just be grateful that the anime I choose to watch for entertainment can inspire me at the same time.

-Kim