Artist's Way author Julia Cameron urges us to write "Morning Pages," three pages of stream of consciousness blather (my word) or whatever is on your mind right after you get up. I do the pages after I meditate and have a cup of coffee, and I always note at the head of the first page: Date, time, temperature and weather.
Today, for instance, it was sunny and warm for a mid-October early morning. I reported on how many of our trees are now leaf-less, that the chickadees and nuthatches are back at the feeder after a summer hiatus and the warm quality of the air, color of the sky. Why do I do this? I have no idea. Part of me thinks after I'm gone to the big mystery novel in the sky, that my kids might like to read what I've written.
But I've discovered over the past few years that those entries can help while writing. Say for instance your murder happens in November, as it does in my work in progress, and I'm writing those scenes in the middle of the summer, which I was. What's it like in November in Portland, Maine? Cold. But it's August and I'm staying at a cottage on Bailey Island and the weather is idyllic and I'm in an island rapture. I can fake it, from memory. But if I have some files that describe exactly what I'm noticing with all five senses firing on a given date in a given month I can go back and use that description/sense in my current out-of-season document.
The next trick will be filing those jottings into computer files. We'll see. I can pluck a journal from the closet in my yoga room, stick my finger in and find my description of the weather. Or I can find an entry where I was feeling an emotion so intensely, I can use that too. It's all grist for the mill, as Ram Dass once said. It's all good.
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