Bumpy Sledding and Editing

I've been away from home for a few days keeping my son's kids. Great kids, but lively. There was snow up their way and of course they wanted to go out and play in it. Trouble was the wind chill was double minus something. It wasn't so bad the day I got there and so we rushed on our boots and gloves and hurried out before dark to decorate the yard with some snow people. Then those minus temperatures helped the snowmen stick around. On the second day the boys wanted to go out and sled on their backyard hill. It was cold. We had to hunt boots and gloves. Took us thirty minutes to get dressed. They got cold and were ready to come in after about fifteen minutes. That's how it goes. But before they got too cold, we did find a little sled. Neither boy made it to the bottom of the hill, but tumbled off about halfway down and rolled the rest of the way. They both wanted me to sled down the hill, but this grandma has learned better than that. The last time I tried to go sledding several years ago with another grandson, I found out pretty fast that older bodies don't like the bumps under those little plastic sleds. So I can build snow people and I can launch my grandkids on the sleds with a little push, but I'm not seeking snow thrills these days. Don't even like slipping in ice on foot or in a car. Does that mean I'm over the hill or just finally getting wise?

My son and his wife were stuck in Atlanta for an extra night and day and so I was late getting home. Since I have a writing deadline looming, I checked back in my blog archives and found a time when I compared that bumpy sledding episode a few years ago to the "bumpy sledding" I was having as I tried to get my new story off the ground. I'm at the same spot now and doing the same as then - hanging on and absorbing the bumps because I think the story is there. I'm putting that story aside to work on the edits of Love Comes Home. No major rewriting, but the little stuff can drive me crazy. I've spent three or four hours on one scene the editor has asked me to do a better job of transition. I'm still not happy with it. It's funny how when I'm in the flow of writing things come easier than when I'm trying to untangle a bit of knotty writing.

So here are a few quotes I put in that long ago post about bumpy writing. I hope it will encourage you if you're a writer and help you understand some of what writers struggle with if you're a reader.

• A writer and nothing else: a man alone in a room with the English language, trying to get human feelings right. --John K. Hutchens (A woman alone in a room, too. I do work much better when I'm alone.)
• Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself-it is the occurring which is difficult. -Stephen Leacock
• I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension. -Norman Mailer (I couldn't agree more. I simply cannot talk about my story in progress. One author I read suggested that if a writer tells her story, there's no need for her to write it.)
• Make 'em laugh; make 'em cry; make 'em wait. - Charles Reade

That last one is advice I want to follow. I think I'll write those words in red on my desk calendar where I can see it every day when I start writing. I'll put it right beside the Proverb about how laughter works good for us like a medicine. Hope you have much laughter and smooth sledding!

By the way, how long has it been since you tried sledding down a hill?  Maybe that was today!

Building a First Snowman

How long has it been since you built a snowman? Even if it's been years, don't you still go out and check out every snowfall and automatically rate the snow as good for building snowmen or sledding? We had snow and some ice on Monday night and Tuesday. It started out as icy rain and in the night, changed to snow before going back to freezing rain or just cold rain. It was one of those interesting days if you had to be out in it all. Then last night the temps went up during the night and the ice melted and the snow condensed, but it was still there.

So today I kept my two-year-old granddaughter for a couple of hours, and we went out to play in the little bit of snow left and built a snowman. Her first at age two and a half. The snow had passed beyond the good snowman building time. We had to sculpt the snowman by scraping up handfuls of snow and plastering it on the snowman. Jillian had fun making arms and hair and adding to the snowman's head until it had a rather odd shape. A head that fell off several times as she added more snow, but we just picked it up and stuck it back atop its body. She had fun and so did I watching her even though it took an hour for my fingers to thaw back out after I convinced her (by picking her up and carrying her) to go inside. She wasn't all that cold because she looked like a little blue snowman herself in her snow pants and jacket.

I've built several snowmen since I left childhood days behind. Usually with a kid or a grandkid. But once not so many years ago when it snowed in March and then turned sunshiny and rather balmy, I went out and played in the snow by myself. I made a snowman and snow woman and their dog. The snow was just too perfect for snowman building to waste that day. And today a few chilled fingers were a small price to pay to see the fun Jillian had sculpting her first snowman.

Here are a few snowman quotes.

• Snowmen fall from Heaven unassembled.
• When it snows you have two choices: shovel or make snow angels.
• The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event.

Hope you enjoyed the snow if it fell where you are and that you didn't have to drive anywhere if the roads were slippery. Oh yeah, and we have one week till Christmas. Snow and Christmas all in the same week. What more could we want? I know. The cookies baked. The candy beaten. The presents wrapped. The cards sent. The Christmas Spirit. Wishing you all a healthy dose of that last whether the other stuff gets done or not.