Shovel, baby, just shovel

At left, old picture of Stockholm removing the urban snow.

I had 8" in the last twenty-four hours. It's occupied a little time though I do have a 4 hp snow blower. It isn't the twin-drive cat-track mounted model I want; but, it does the job in one pass ninety percent of the time and there is no need to replace it.

I just want a giant new model. I don't need a giant new model.

In essence, I have a story I'm working on now with the shovel. I've done the rough drafts, have the outline, and am shoveling the text onto the page. I feel better about focusing on prose when I have the story and some of the plot interlinks all mapped out. When I feel good about a story, the prose goes better.

Amiee Bender has a podcast somewhere here on the net that discusses mental states when writing. She doesn't assert that we do our best work when we're comfortable, though we're almost certain not to do our worst.

Interesting - and it seems to work for me.

It's cold here now post snow. Fire going, foxhound on the ottoman with my feet, chicken and dumplings in the pot. Time for some serious prose progress.

I hope this evening sees the same for you. There are so many things that have to be done to be a "writer." Once and a while, it is the actual production of finished text. Seems like it happens in sessions  too far apart - between research, mulling, tea drinking, scribbling, plotting, revising, editing, and reading. I'm writing snippets of bits and pieces every day but so far, going back and sorting through the detritus hasn't happened. It's just the "daily write."

The good stuff seems to stick in the fore-brain. At least, I hope the concepts that stick are "the good stuff."

Write tonight. Feel good about it. You're doing what you set out to do when all alone in your mind: communicating with people you don't know so that they know you.