Winter is an excellent time to curl up with a good book, and to observe a character’s journey from their ‘before’ to their ‘after.’ As a writer, it’s also a great time to curl up with the laptop and move the work-in-progress along. When it’s cold and blustery outside, staying warm and cozy inside with several projects one might have been putting off during sunnier days seems an easy way to pass the time.
This picture is from a trip I took to Finland in April on year. Yes, April. While many of us might associate April with the green of spring, there are many places in the world where the thaw has yet to arrive. There is beauty in a frozen winter with bright blue skies and a landscape that changes before our eyes.
Of course, snow brings along many inconveniences, yet it can also effortlessly transforms our world overnight. A good novel can provide the same effect, when we immerse ourselves in a world that is much like our own, yet still strikingly different.
In my novel, The Magic of Cape Disappointment, winter is both the starting season and ending season for the novel. The character’s transformation is complete within the bookended seasons of that year.
Of course, winter also brings us with the new year where we plan our own transformational goals for the coming year. Whatever the year has planned for us, I do hope that it includes many easy, sunny days, as well as, reflective winter days where we cozy up to a good book by the fire and make plans for the new year ahead.
Transformation can occur overnight, as with waking up to a snowy scene, or it can be more gradual like plotting out and writing a new novel over the course of several months. Either way, we grow and change through the seasons of our own lives. I hope this year brings everyone great joy and comfort…and, if we’re really lucky, a little magic.
Julie Manthey 