the weather - what else?

The weather matters to a book. After all, what else is happening in my room except the book and the weather? The view from my window is transformed by snow. Today we have shades of grey, fawn and white. All is muffled. If I were beginning a book or a chapter, the weather would creep in somehow, and now, redrafting, it helps to create mood. Everything is a little tense in the chapter I'm writing. Death hovers. How appropriate then, to tap into this Winter Solstice, where the world is paralysed by snow, and even to leave the front door takes considerable effort, a deep breath, a launching forward.

Some things, like snow, a writer can't help. It just comes, it insinuates itself faintly into the pages. But it is there even if I'm writing drought and sunshine.