Weather or Not

This is a picture my dad just emailed me...I hope he doesn't mind my borrowing it!

At the moment I write this (which is probably several hours before it will be posted), I'm sitting bundled up next to my window, watching the snow pile up in the woods. I suspect soon enough some sensational newscasters will be calling this Connecticut's blizzard of the decade; between last weekend's and today's storms, the mounds are so high around the house that when I step in them I'm buried well over my hips. But I'm not foolish enough to be out in it. I have a crocheted blanket in bright rainbow colors wrapped around my shoulders (more for the brightness than the warmth as our heat is functioning just perfectly); I have a pile of inspiring writing books to my left and a baby napping peacefully to my right; because the roads are so treacherous, Mark brought some light carving work home and is filling the house with the gentle scraping sounds of a chisel on a maple violin back.

Can you tell I love snowy days?

I like the way everyone uses the word “muted” to describe the world under a coating of snow; it really does feel as if the noise and clamor and craziness of life has been silenced and slowed. The day seems to have stretched itself out and I'm finding time for writing, for playing and reading with the girls, for cuddling with my family under blankets, and for simply enjoying every moment.

I hope your days were equally lovely—snow or no!

In the hope of being not just happy, but useful, I'll leave you with some of the inspiration I've found in the aforementioned stack of (wonderful, highly-recommended) writing books:

“It's horribly elusive, this same kind of sensation one has from certain books, poems, and works of art. Only the symptoms are easy to describe. The hair prickles on the back of the neck, and there is a hollowness in the throat and at the pit of the stomach—a great excitement that is a mixture of astonishment and delight. It's a little like catching sight unexpectedly of someone with whom you are very much in love. And the delight when it swamps you is full of echoes, carrying you away, as de la Mare said, 'as if into another world.'”
--Susan Cooper, on experiencing truly great art, from her talk “Nahum Tarune's Book,” in the collection Dreams and Wishes: Essays on Writing for Children

“The poet Carolyn Kizer said to me recently, 'Poets are interested mostly in death and commas,' and I agreed. Now I add: Prose writers are interested mostly in life and commas.”
Ursula K. LeGuin, in Steering the Craft

“You and I have seen miracles—let us never cease to celebrate them.”
--Joyce Kilmer in a letter to his wife Aline, on the importance of letting faith shine through in all their writing, From Joyce's Kilmer's Poems, Essays and Letters: Volume Two