Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Melanie Blogs

While I am traveling today, we have guest blogger Melanie Wells, author of When the Day of Evil Comes and Soul Hunter. Take it away, Melanie . . .
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Alright – the heat. Let’s talk about the heat. Let’s talk about heat and writing. Many great writers have written while it’s hot. Hemingway had a thing for tropical weather. Eudora Welty lived in Jackson, Mississippi. I don’t need to add anything to that, do I? In fact, all the great southern writers, at least the ones who were writing before about 1960, probably did it without air conditioning. (I will refrain from discussing typewriters vs. computers – that’s for another day. But Eudora Welty used to cut her stories into strips and tape them all over her house to restructure the manuscript. Let’s all bow our heads and thank Jesus for computers.)

* Pause here for a moment of silence *

Okay - I live in the south, and may I just say, it’s hot here? It was 104 degrees today. So I got in my car today, and this little plastic thingy had actually melted off the dashboard. That’s how hot it was in Dallas today. Will somebody please tell me what this is about? Is Al Gore right? (He is, I think – have you seen his charts?)

Whether he is or isn’t, I’ve been thinking that heat should produce great writing. Great writers – or at least writers who aspire to be great – use the heat to bake an idea. Adversity breeds creativity. There’s something moving about sitting at the keyboard, t-shirt a little damp, hair up off your neck, glasses on, pounding away. It’s like boxing. Those guys are always sweating. You look at them and you KNOW they’re working hard.

Heat should be in great writing. Raise your hand if you sweated through every page of Heart of Darkness. My characters sweat. I like to make them sweat. If you don’t let them sweat, you’re protecting them too much and no one will care what happens to them.

It’s sort of a Zen thing, really. BE the heat. Be one with the heat and maybe you can use it to bake you. Or bake your story. Or bake your characters. Or melt that little thingy off your dashboard. When I walk out into the oven that is my parking lot at work and smell the pollution and feel my ozone headache begin to throb behind my eyes, I try to think about translating that feeling, that horrid, sweltering moment, into fiction. Slapping it down on the page and helping my readers smell the pollution too.

If nothing else, writers should be great observers. To feel the heat is to measure its effect on you and on the world around you. And then to share the sweat. It’s one thing we all have in common.

God likes to turn up the heat on us, too. He uses the heat to make us sweat. And then He wipes the sweat from our brows and hands us a fan and says “get used to it.”

At any rate, I’m tired of the heat. I’ve gotten everything out of it I care to.

I’m ready to smell the rain.

8 comments:

Kristy Dykes said...

I thought you were saying "heart" as I read the first few words of your post. Heehee.

Great post. Thanks for a charge to our creativity.

You live in Texas? The south, you say? I thought that was the west! GRIN, but true. I live in the South. Florida GRIN

Anyway, I really liked your post, for the creativity it inspired in us and also your humor. It was refreshing.

Tina Helmuth said...

I live in northern Minnesota. Everything is south to me! But we had record heat this summer. A day of 97 degrees in July set a record.

But it's true when they say it's not the heat, it's the humidity. Three weeks straight of temps above 93 with 88% humidity left me less than inspired to write. I may be picky, but breathing and creativity go together for me.

Even so, summer is my favorite season. This is Minnesota. We're heading into our two weeks of fall as I type. Then it will be on to our nine months of winter. When I have more books under my belt, I have a feeling most of my characters will be COLD.

Thanks for blogging, Melanie. I enjoyed it.

Cheryl said...

Great blog Melanie. :-) I loathe the heat and humidity that invades Ohio in the summer. So to torment ourselves, we pull up the current weather in Anchorage, Alaska. Sixties is usually the high temperature there. We spent two weeks in Alaska this summer and it was just cruel to come back.

I will say, though, I won't complain about mosquitoes anymore. Not after battling Alaskan mosquitoes. Eesh.

Margo Carmichael said...

I live in the Dallas area, too. It's the sunspots. I blame it all on sunspots. Global warming, rejection letters, typos. : ) (No kidding about the first one. Workin' on the rest!) Off to adjust the thermostat....

Margo Carmichael said...

Hey, Cheryl, would those be eskimosquitoes?

Unknown said...

I live in Arizona. Bring me a comfortable chair and air conditioning anyday!

Margo Carmichael said...

"It's hotter than the eyes of hell here," starts _When the Day of Evil Comes_. That's one scary story. Just glad that lake's in Austin, not Dallas! : )

Anonymous said...

Thanks, women! Obviously we are experiencing the heat in a universal way this summer. I'm working on my attitude by LEAVING. I'm gone the next two weeks - anywhere but here!

Thank the lord Jesus for air conditioning and mosquito repellant. I've heard about those Alaskan mosquitos - like little Cessnas.

xo MW