Today was a snow day for the local school, and so is tomorrow.  Additional snow is in the forecast.  So far, the repairs to the aging wall furnace are holding out.  The water was frozen in the bath-tub faucet, but the kitchen sink was still dispensing H2o this am.  I lighted the scary bathroom heater (old style natural-gas wall heater that lights with a match) and ran it for a while.  About 3:00 PM, the water began to flow in the tub, so I left it on a tidge so it would not freeze again.  Makes for an over-sized water bill, but cheaper than a plumber.

I love snow days.  They are a gift of time that sort of makes up for the extra hours and unexpected chores connected with work.  I had the foresight to bring home all the needed work that did not require being physically on-site, which means that when school does re-open I won’t be scrambling to catch up.

Vacation took care of a lot of the heavy cleaning around the house and allowed me to have time to play; so today I settled in to reading friends’news and writing.

A blank computer screen is almost as scary as a blank piece of paper; but it does have one advantage:  computers that have an internet connection allow one to research, browse the news, read new books (yep, I was naughty and bought some e-stories from Fictionwise.com.), and look up art works.  This enabled me to jump start my writing, and I spent six hours composing various bits.

Unfortunately, I did have some chores that required leaving the house.  However, today was sunshiny, although it was cold and the back-roads hazardous, so it seemed prudent to take advantage of the break in the inclement weather.

After a trip to the bank, I headed for the laundromat.  Now, I usually try to take something with me to write on or a book to read; but today I was in a hurry to take advantage of the window of decent weather, so I forgot.  After doing a bit of grocery shopping while I waited on my wash, I stopped at the paperback book rack.  There were several books I’d not yet read, but as I read the synopsis on the back of each one I got the feeling that either a) I had read the book before in other incarnations (possibly several times), or b) that I had just read the whole book by reading the cover.  Neither encouraged me to invest in this particular collection of words-in-a-row.  Maybe it was the good short stories I had read earlier, or the six hours I had just spent writing articles; or maybe it was the excellent fiction my aunt had given me just before Christmas; or maybe I’m just getting picky in my old age: but instead of buying a book, I purchased a pen and a small notebook.  I figured I could write something at least as good as what was on that rack, and maybe I could write something better.

Some years ago, I began a science fiction novel.  It has three chapters written, and beached upon certain physical difficulties like setting, how far can a human walk in a day, making sure I based the whole thing upon science rather than fantasy–even pseudo science if need be, but plausible in context, with no cheating.  I have two complete manuscripts (three if you count the highly dirivative tale I wrote while still in high school); one, a rather awful composition about religious prejudice in a small community; the other, a fairly readable tale of gossip gone wrong in Podunk, Somewhere, USA.  These manuscripts had developed chapter by chapter, the characters shaping the tale as I went along.  But for this one, I know I’m going to have to do something that does not come naturally to me:  outline.

I totally stink at outlining.  I am the writer that will write the article/story, whatever, first; and then write an outline if teachers insist that I have one.  I got better at it when I took public speaking because we didn’t write the speeches out in full; we spoke from an outline.  It took a lot of work on the part of my speech teacher to pry my fingers loose from my carefully crafted, written-out-in-full scripts that I wanted to read word for word, but he did triumph in the end.

Can I write an outline that will be relevant, cogent and functional for my personal style of writing?  Can I craft a story that has science, a mystery, and a significant social and political message?  Can I make it entertaining?  And above all, can I sell the thing after I have it written?

Those are scary questions, my writing friends.  Wish me luck?