More Brutal Cold, More Disconnect

I think for writers all personal experience inevitably lends itself in some way to our stories but I wonder about things that feel so abstract as landscape and weather. It’s been TOO COLD here in Maine these first few days of the year, so I have been spending all my time in the house, cut off even from my beloved snow-shoveling–despite quality snow boots and socks, my crummy toes can stay out in sub-zero weather for only about 45 minutes before I’m in danger of the first stage of frostbite. And as it happens, the shorty I wrote each day starred a deeply disconnected person. Coincidence?

Working Title: “Basically Poison”
1st Sentence: She had declared her love for the Russian novelists and he had stuttered something about Conrad and she blinked, tensed.
Favorite Sentence: Did he know that tomatoes were in the nightshade family and would he eat the second cousin of hemlock, no he would not, so why do we eat tomatoes and eggplant when they’re basically poison?
Word Length: 256

This is one of my favorite snow pictures, taken by my husband on a street very near our house, in a far less brutal winter.