Last week a friend posted a beautiful piece on snow at http://sparksinshadow.wordpress.com/. Her words made me long for snow, as up until that day, our winter had been mild. I even commented on how I was looking forward to the predicted snow we were supposed to get within a few days.

That was before a nightmare trip on the highway that took hours of negotiating spun out cars, trucks, and buses, driving sideways in the road in my own truck, and seeing trees come down. That was also before spending three days with no power, running the generator, feeding the wood stove, watching more trees come down, and chainsawing our way out. I regretted my comment on that blog.

Only momentarily.

Because today I did not have to run a child to school, do laundry, and run errands. Instead, the snow has given me a whole day to write. How wonderful is that?

The photo below doesn’t show the depth of the snow that much. We have three feet right now and it’s still snowing. I’m going to see if I can find a way to send it back to the sparksinshadow blog. After I finish writing, of course.

The owner of a bookstore is offering a course on writing and has asked myself and two friends to host it. Of course we said no.

Right. Of course we greedily jumped at the chance. We will be meeting soon to brainstorm ideas, and here’s where my mind has wandered off to. Let’s see. Plot, character arc, dialog, setting, to outline or not to outline. Blah, blah, blah. How many times have we listened to people discourse on those topics?

It seems like eventually a writer ends up talking about their individual  writing process. And believe me, I’m not one of those who says a writer has to write my way or they’re doing it wrong. Which then makes me wonder, why talk about my process if it is simply what works for me? And who cares?

See how easy it is to talk yourself out of feeling like you have anything valuable to offer?  But seriously, how can you make such a course fresh and interesting? Well, of course it depends on the skill level of the audience. Brand new writers are going to be excited to talk about any of those topics. Writers who have been in the business a while, however, might want more.

That all sounds fine, but I still want a flash-bulb idea. I want to walk along the story river and find a rock of an idea that’s never been turned over.

I want to have people leave excited to write. That, to me, is more important than talking about whether to outline or not. So then the question is, how do you create and share that excitement?

I guess you talk about the love of writing because really, that’s why we write isn’t it? We don’t love writing because we get to plot or create a synopsis.

So help me out here. Why do you love writing? Or creating any art form for that matter?

I spent a few years as the oldest of three children with a widowed mother. Then I spent many more years as a middle child when mom married a widower with two of his own. The oldest of those two became the oldest of all us kids and there were many nights when I woke up with a bloody nose or scared or sick, that I knocked on her door and pushed her into the mom role. I’m still not sure why us younger kids woke her rather than mom or dad, but we did.

Yesterday I called and got her answering machine and her message began the expected way,’hello, this is…’ but after she said the name I know her by, she continued with her full formal name that some call her, and then followed that with sister, mom, and all the labels for the various roles she has had in life.

I loved that message. And it made me think of those roles, those labels, the parts we play in life. I wondered if those labels ever fully define us. I’m not sure they can because each is simply a piece of us, obviously.

And that, of course, eventually led to writing, as most of my mental meanderings do. I wondered if this could be a tool for avoiding cardboard characters. If I think of every label my character could live under, each role that is played depending on the person applying the label, then I believe I would have a fully fleshed character. Because that character is going to react differently depending on the label applied at that moment.

Plus, with each label comes conflicts, multiple backstories, dreams, hopes, happiness…think about it. I’m going to have a completely different set of tensions and conflicts as mother, wife, sister, and even dog owner. Each separate set of conflicts meshes to create me, but I react differently to stress as a mother than stress as a dog owner.

So, not to belabor the point as it’s obvious I’m sure, but I think for future stories I’ll keep this  in my writer’s toolbox as one more way to help create real, believable, fully developed people.

And then I think I’m going to give my sister another call.