SPARE A THOUGHT FOR THE WRITER IN WINTER

Is it cold where you are?

Spare a thought for the writer, if so.

Only writers and sadists (and possibly skiers) find anything of worth in winter. As the wind turns predator and ice grows like a skin over the earth, the wise head for the comfort of a blazing fire, hot soup and warm clothing. The elderly will sit by the window shawled and snug, and comment about how this winter is the worst they’ve seen since before you were born. They say the same thing every year but oddly enough, it always feels as if they’re right.

The writer then, remarkable creature that he is, stands in the snow, mouth agape and squinting at a weathered oak with its gnarled branches reaching up to the sky as if in supplication. There is a story here, thinks he. And perhaps there is, but wouldn’t a view from inside serve his inspiration just as well? Well, no. You see, out here in the gnawing bitter cold, ankle-deep in snow and shaking, the venerable writer is already studying his reaction to the cold, the crystallization of his breath, the sound the chattering of his teeth makes in the still frozen air. Authenticity, you know. And so he stands beside that withering oak as wet kisses smack his cheeks, eyes narrowed and watching, ignoring the cold throb in his toes, just as later in the comfort of his office, perhaps with a dog or a cat at his feet and a cup of cocoa at hand, a man in his story will watch that same oak, eyes narrowed and shivering. The character will perhaps ponder the absurdity of standing like a fool in the eye of a winter storm, but this will of course be purely fiction, for nothing of the sort occurred to his creator.

A rare creature is this writer then, a man who like an artist can divine beauty from nature at its worst but will not shy away from letting it chew on his bones. As the earth grows teeth, he is content to stand between its jaws and marvel at its fury. Every whisper of snow, every moan of wind is a voice goading him to create. Every icy crackle and mournful birdcall summons ink to his veins for the page in his head. It is a raging white symphony and he its sole audience.

And later still, with his masterwork scribbled in invisible notes, he will think as such marvelous creatures so often do, that it was worth every chill, every shiver, every pang of pain. He will gesticulate at the nurses as they smile practiced smiles, regale the doctors with malformed thoughts, fractured ideas, impress the surgeons as they wheel him into a room with no pictures on the walls. He will bluster and showboat, hypothesize and proclaim. And again he will think (as such marvelous creatures so often do), that it was worth every chill, every pain, every toe.