Goodness, where does it all come from? The rain, I mean - there's no end to it in Devon, but this is after a really dry few weeks in early summer when the soft fruit didn't get enough water and didn't bother to grow.
But bad weather makes it easier to stay inside, and not tug at the manacles which chain me to my PC too strenuously. I've just written a scene in which my characters are walking around in the rain. I wonder if anyone else finds themselves writing about rainy days when it's raining outside, and sunny days when it's sunny?
I can't always do it that way, of course. I'm now writing an article for January's Writing Magazine in which I'm suggesting things writers could do during these dark, cold winter days.
Talk about wishing my life away...
MJ: I wonder if anyone else finds themselves writing about rainy days when it's raining outside, and sunny days when it's sunny?
ReplyDeleteIn SF writing-crit, it's call "Dischism".
The unwitting intrusion of the author’s physical surroundings, or the author’s own mental state, into the text of the story. Authors who smoke or drink while writing often drown or choke their characters with an endless supply of booze and cigs. In subtler forms of the Dischism, the characters complain of their confusion and indecision — when this is actually the author’s condition at the moment of writing, not theirs within the story. "Dischism" is named after the critic who diagnosed this syndrome. (Attr. Thomas M. Disch)
- Turkey City Lexicon
That's really interesting, Ray - had better stop stuffing my face with chocolate while I'm writing, then, otherwise all my characters are going to end up the size of barges...
ReplyDeleteIf my own working habits are anything to go by, it probably explains why so many novels have a form of padding that Clare calls 'cup of tea syndrome'. I caricature, but not much:
ReplyDelete"You'd best sit down," she said.
Charles sat in the hard-backed chair as his mother prepared a tray, setting out white china cups, a bowl of sugar lumps, a carton of semi-skimmed milk, and a porcelain teapot. She rinsed the pot then spooned in three large portions of Earl Grey tea, pouring the boiling water over the leaves.
"How are you?" Charles said.
His mother gently stirred the tea in the pot. She set out a cup and saucer for Charles and one for herself, then poured a little milk into each cup.
"Well enough," she said, picking up the strainer. She poured accurately, the amber stream gently splashing as the aromatic bergamot-scented steam rose in a plume. Holding the tongs carefully in bony arthritic fingers, she dropped two lumps of sugar into her cup, and stirred it. "So why are you here, Charles?"