Most days during winter in my area are full of wind. That’s a good thing when it comes to working on my latest book, the second in a new series. (The first book, The Kilhellion, hasn’t come out yet. It’s still in edits.)
Most people know about the concept of wind chill. There’s certainly a lot of that going on around here. But I also get something that feels like wind thrill. It’s exhilarating working outside in on windy days. It’s pretty risky, as there’s often flying debris. I’ve also had dead branches that I’m trying to prune away whip around it my hand and bash me.
Yes, it’s really that windy around here.
I used to stay indoors, but a visiting friend reminded me that although there are bad weather days when most people should stay indoors, more often they’re not so much bad weather days as days when you need the right clothing. So I’ve been taking that to heart. And I have to say that a warm sweater, a wind breaker, insulated jeans, and good boots kept me warm and happy for hours. I worked until it got ridiculous–basically, too dark to work properly.
Yes, I’ve considered setting up work lights to keep working in the garden.
If you’re new to me and my life, you might be wondering why I’m talking about gardening instead of about writing. You might even wonder if this is the right EM Prazeman, author of the twin trilogies The Lord Jester’s Legacy and The Poisoned Past. Yep. This is the right place. Rightly or wrongly, I assume that there are loads of authors out there talking about the writing process. I don’t think anyone needs that, or anything, from me. That if anything, readers might be interested where all the writing comes from. Not so much where I get my ideas (from a weird creature that nests under a hawthorn tree about a hundred feet from my house) but where the feels come from.
Those feels come from my life, a lot of which is spent in my garden but also while traveling and crafting art and stuff. Which brings me back to the wind. This new book is titled To Free the Wind. So every moment I spend outside in stormy weather fills me up with the vastness that is in some ways simple–moving air. We breathe in the air so softly while indoors, it’s easy to forget we’re even doing it. Air seems to be invisible, and to our eyes it pretty much is invisible. But it’s powerful, and vital, full of energy, seemingly endless but also precious and fragile when viewed in comparison to the rest of the universe.
I want to get that all down in the book. Along with a lot of character torture, because you know, this is me, after all.
Shortly I’ll be going out for some fresh air. I’ll have to be very respectful of this massive thing that can so easily hurt me, but also keeps me alive and healthy. I’ll take deep breaths before I come back inside, and hold within the memory of Wind as I sit, and write, and dream of a world where one of the characters forms a very special, frightening, awesome relationship with what we so often take for granted.
Thanks for reading!