You bet it does. We are currently stuck in our third (or is it fourth) straight week of rain. Yesterday, it looked like we would finally get some nice weather… for about ten minutes and then it started to hail! As much as I like the rain, this is simply too much.
To make things even worse, I’ve let the weather get in the way of my writing. I finish my day, face the rain on my way home and when it’s time for me to write, I simply don’t feel like it. That means I’ve only added about 1,000 words in the past few days. Nowhere near what I’d like to have done.
So I feel guilty about my lack of progress on that front and I feel badly because my outside projects haven’t been done. By the time I finally can mow my lawn, I’ll need a machete to get through it. Still, it hasn’t been a total wash (pardon the pun).
I now have additional material for my current work-in-progress. Lots of rain usually means raised river and lake levels (check) and in some parts of the country/world, mudslides occur. We saw the remnants of a mudslide when we went house-boating three weeks ago so that image is still clear in my mind.
*Ding* I now know exactly how my WIP will end. Who ever said this blogging thing didn’t help the creative process? 🙂
I also know some of the extra obstacles my characters will have to go through. I can channel some of my rain-sodden misery into their story too. (Licks finger and draws imaginary ‘1’ in the air)
The more I write about it, the less of a problem the rain seems to be. I’m actually getting excited about the story again! I guess it’s true: dwell on the negative and you will be pulled down, look at the positive and you’ll be encouraged.
Living where I do, the weather will always be a challenge. Too cold and snowy in the winter, too rainy in the spring and often too hot (or too cold) in the summer. So many excuses to get out of writing, so little time. It also gives me a real wealth of experiences that I can put my own characters through (I guess that’s my own way of telling myself to ‘Stop Complaining’).
What I need to keep in the forefront of my mind is to be more aware of the weather. How does it make me feel? What do I both want to do and not want to do? How are the people around me reacting?
At the end of the day, it will make my stories, and characters, richer and more interesting.
