Snow Days: Doing the Wannas (A Love Letter)
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Hi lovies,
We’re on day two of a snow storm. Here in Portland, we don’t get snow often. So when we do, it’s an event. Snow day! No school! Work from home! Watch videos of clueless Portlanders trying to drive in it! Go sledding at the park! Come home and get cozy with a cup of hot chocolate (maybe spiked) by the fake fire.
It’s all very distracting, in the most wonderful of ways.
I love me a snow day, have ever since I was a kid (when I swear we got a lot more of them). And it’s only just now, lo, all these many years later, that it’s occurred to me to ask why? Why do I (and so many others) like snow days so much?
Because: All bets are off. Snow covers everything with a blanket of white. It changes how things look in my familiar neighborhood. It’s fun. I get a free pass. I feel like I can do whatever I want because my world is on hold for awhile.
It’s that last that has got me thinking: I feel like I can do anything I want. How often do we as adults let ourselves do that? Maybe you do, but I don’t. I grew up in the dark ages, which were surprisingly light when it came to kids having fifty million activities to do. My parents were too poor or lazy to have us uber-scheduled and so I remember many a time when the whole wonderful day stretched before me with nothing in particular to do. I could fill it with whatever I wanted.
And that’s what snow days feel like.
One of the things I love best about the Artist’s Way process that I’m currently teaching is that Julia Cameron urges us to find little ways to get the things we love into our lives. Want to be a dancer? Find a YouTube video and follow it for five minutes. Dearly desire a trip to Iceland? Find photos of it and read articles to learn more. Start planning a trip, even if you have no idea when or how you’ll be able to do it. Want to rescue a pug but aren’t sure how to find one? Tell everyone you know you’re looking. (And then, as if by magic, the perfect pug will arrive in your life, as Chip the pug did in mine.)
And so I submit that we can all add the flavor of a snow day into our lives. I’m calling this, “doing the wannas,” as in doing whatever in the hell it is you really want to do. A little bit here, a little bit there. Your WIP is a women’s fiction novel but you secretly yearn to write a cozy fantasy? Take a few notes and get started. Have fun, let it be a secret project just for you. Have an essay you long to write about that time you got lost on a hike in the woods and met the love of your life? Write it. Write it without worrying about what you’re going to do with it, or who is going to read it, or where it might get published. Write it for the love of it.
Because after all, that’s why we do the writing, isn’t it?
Love, light, and good writing,
Charlotte
P.S. Feel free to share your favorite thing about snow days.
A NEW THING I’M DOING FOR YOU
It’s a weekly…thing. Maybe a prompt or an exercise, but it will always be something fun to do for your creativity or your writing. Probably most often for your writing. I’m not really sure, I just thought of this and figured I’d try it. The idea is to key it to the topic of the love letter. So here goes:
This week, think about your wannas as they relate to your writing. Do you have things you long to write other than your current WIP? Do you have writing conferences or retreats you’d like to attend? (May I suggest this one?) Maybe you want to create a room or your own to write in, or go to the same coffee shop every day at the same time to work. Write all your wannas down. Think of this as your writing bucket list and go wild. When you’re done, go back through and choose one thing that you can start to actualize, even if it is in the smallest of ways.
Work With Me
I was crazy busy in January and I’ve completed some of those projects so I now have room on my roster for either one book coaching client (regular sessions to discuss an ongoing project) or a manuscript evaluation/dev edit (reading your story when it’s finished).
Here’s what my client Jacqueline Hampton said about me in an email:
“I have to say I continue to be SO thrilled at how your comments are just right on the money and help me go deeper in areas where it makes sense. And refine those character arcs. Super excited about the book."
The truth of the matter is that I’m thrilled to be working with her and super excited about her book, too! If you’re interested, reply to this newsletter or email me at chardixon@comcast.net.
Happily, I’ve already had a couple of inquiries, so if you are interested, don’t delay.
Articles and Resources
Camille Pagan has opened up her Career Novelist Mastermind. I can’t recommend this enough. Sign up here and tell her Charlotte sent you.
Kayaker swallowed by a whale. This is not AI, as I thought it was when the hub showed it to me.
Openings are hard. I was about to write a post on them (still might) and I saw this. Worth reading.
How to use Reddit to sell books. I adore Reddit and it’s brilliant to think of it as a place to promote your books. This post tells how.
Books
The Warbler, by Sarah Beth Durst. I chose this as my Amazon Prime choice for the month because I loved the author’s cozy fantasy book, The Spell Shop. This is not a fantasy per se, but it definitely has magical elements in it. Ten months is the longest Elisa has ever stayed anywhere. She’s afraid if she stays longer the family curse will turn her into a tree. I’m really enjoying this and it’s a quick read.
Mind Your Body, by Nicole J. Sachs. For anybody who suffers from chronic pain or anxiety, this is the book for you. Sachs is a protege of Dr. Sarno, the original mind-body dude who helped so many people heal from back pain. Sachs is bringing his work to a contemporary audience. It’s such good stuff, and she writes in a very accessible manner. Highly recommended.
The Last One, by Rachel Howzell Howell. I got this for Christmas. Okay, I bought it myself and made my husband wrap it. But I digress. I’ve read her thrillers, most recently What Fire Brings, which in retrospect is eerily prescient with the L.A. fires. So I was interested in her foray into romantasy. I’m not a big fantasy reader (though I do enjoy cozy fantasy, no surprise), so I’m not sure how it fits into the genre. At first I was a little put off, the pace felt slow and the character has a very modern sensibility. But it’s picking up and I’m starting to feel more enthusiasm for it. We’ll see. Update: Still working on this one, haven’t given up yet. It’s just that those other two books jumped into my life. What’s a reader to do?
Workshops in England and France
Information, including dates and cost, for our 2025 England workshops is now listed on our website. We’ve had several writers indicate strong interest in joining and a couple of sign-ups already, so we recommend registering soon.
I’ve just updated our France page as well!
And if you want a taste of the adventure that awaits, with our overseas workshops, you can read my posts about this year here, and here, here, here, and here.
Other places to connect with me:
My website (badly in need of an upgrade)
Our workshop website
My original blog (now for archive purposes only, no longer updated, but damn there are a lot of articles on it)
Love this! It's a great reminder to do the little things that bring us joy--because they do add up. :) Hope you're enjoying your snow! We have several inches here, too.
I read The Warbler too. Love it when our fiction choices overlap.