Prompt: Write About Winter
Posted by David Duhr in 
Discussion questions: Write about winter. If you’d like, use any of the following questions for inspiration: What are you doing to prepare for the coming winter, as a writer and in general? Are you looking forward to it or are you dreading it (or both)? What are your biggest hopes and fears for the coming winter? And how do you feel about winter in general? What are some of your favorite winter memories? What has been your best winter as a writer, and why?
I’m slowly working my way through my near-annual reread of one of my favorite poems, James Hazard’s “The Snow Crazy Copybook,” a work that plunges me into a winter mood.
I mean that in a good way. Mostly.
(I can’t find this poem anywhere online, but if you’re curious, you can see an excerpt here.)
For many of us, 2020 can’t go away quickly enough. But I can’t imagine that the deep, dark days of January and February will feel much better than this year has.
So I’m mentally/emotionally prepping for winter. Which includes reading this poem. And which also includes wondering about you and your own thoughts about winter, in general and this year’s.
This week’s prompt is simple: Write about winter. Whatever comes to mind.
Here are a few questions, if you need some inspiration:
What are you doing to prepare for the coming winter, as a writer and in general? Are you looking forward to it or are you dreading it (or both)? What are your biggest hopes and fears for the coming winter?
And how do you feel about winter in general? What are some of your favorite winter memories? What has been your best winter as a writer, and why?
Let me know all of this and more below!
And if you want some more inspiration, here are a few early stanzas from James Hazard’s “The Snow Crazy Copybook”:
1.
The sound of small dry flakes, almost pellets,
falling in a stand of cedars nearby the shack
made me strange today.
My mind jumped inside me like a stung hand.
In the cedars the dry flakes sounded like mice
bites. Yipes! I do not want to die here, is the
thought that stung me.
In the shack I was half afraid, or more, to open
the door. I might find myself laid out there,
mice nibbling on parts of my body. They have
been watching me from their sneaky corners
since I got here.
Is that why I see their mouse eyes and mouse
ears so eager in their sneaky corners? Is it me,
not scraps from my table, they are waiting for?
WriteByNight co-founder David Duhr is fiction editor at the Texas Observer and co-host of the Yak Babies podcast, and has written about books for the Dallas Morning News, Electric Literature, Publishing Perspectives, and others.
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The elite have promised us a “Dark Winter,” so I am anxious about whatever more horrors they intend to throw at us. I usually prefer winter as an escape from the oppressive deep southern summers. Times of rare snows in Mississippi are generally good memories–driving through snow flurries late at night, riding horseback over frozen fields, opening the trailer door and being shocked at the world buried under several inches of snow. I don’t really have an association of winter and writing. Maybe the closest is the opening lines of my Christmas fable, “The Spark.” This is it: Arctic… Read more »
I understand those steamy oppressive summer. As for the Dark winter…I’m hoping the elite run into a wall that will knock some sense into them.
Nice beginning to the story. You need to travel to the north and experience the cold winter snows. Very different from the chilled winters of the south were a winter coat is normally not needed.
Do Mississippians know how to handle snow? I remember it snowing once in Austin. It was no more than a light dusting, but it felt like the entire city was thrown into a panic. They considered closing (and maybe did close; I don’t remember) the schools. Meanwhile, back in my Wisconsin childhood, it seemed like we needed six and a half feet of the stuff to get a whiff of a snow day.
Not at all. Pretty much any snowfall that sticks will close the schools. When I was in school, any flurries always prompted anticipation of a snow day or two. If it happened, there followed a frenzy of snowball battles and snowmen constructions. There was one particularly heavy snow in 1968 when I was 12. I don’t remember how long we were out of school, but it was a time of kid snow follies that my peers remembered for years. Probably still do. Southern snow tends to be icy and all but one of the snows I remember were just that.… Read more »
The wet snow is so much more fun, especially for kids. Did you try making snowballs with the dry and powdery stuff? Impossible and frustrating.
I remember a year in Knoxville in the 70s where they got 12 inches of snow. closed the city for a week. I was the only one who was able to drive to work since I was used to snow. Fun time. Meanwhile, In Union Grove WI we got a six ft of snow. None of the cars in the parking lot could be seen . They plowed the first row based on my CB whip on the back of my car. Was at work for 3 days, unable to get home.
I must hear more about this Union Grove storm. When did it happen? What was it like to stay at work for *three days*! Were you cooped up with a bunch of co-workers? Did anyone resort to cannibalism? (Not to survive, but just like out of anger or boredom?)
Funny! I was working at Southern Colony a home for the mentally handicapped. My coworkers were a a riot. We set up games and fun things to do with the ‘kids’. There was plenty of food but getting it to us took some back breaking work to make a path between the buildings. We had to ‘short staff’ so that a four worked during the day and the other four worked the night doing 12 hours shifts. This was around ’78 or ’79. We dressed those we could take out up and went out and played in the snow. Over… Read more »
I like this story. It reminds me somewhat of a novel called One Amazing Thing, where an earthquake traps a group of people inside a visa office; they have to deal with rationing food, but then they start to talk and get to know each other and tell stories. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.
Dave, thanks for this prompt. Justine has been encouraging me in the direction of personal essays, so I dedicate this to her in endless appreciation. Lockdown: Florida Winter 2020, or, Preparing Ourselves, Preparing Our Tools An email I sent my wife in the opening days of December. She is 1300 miles north in her own lockdown; I am solo here: Weather Alert: Winter Arrives in Florida Today In kitchens all across Florida, winter has arrived. With temperatures dropping below 86 degrees Fahrenheit, coconut oil is freezing. In a related event, scoopable cat litter is stinking less. Preparation Winter is always… Read more »
I enjoy this, Sid. Thank you for sharing it. Melancholy and hopeful all at the same time. I’m going to reread it on Dec. 21!
Thanks, David. I feel honored. To quote Bilbo Baggins after a reading of his poetry to elves, “It went off better than I expected, I don’t often get asked for a second hearing.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, end of the chapter “Many Meetings.”)
This is such a tease … I want to read all of Jim Hazard’s poem. Is it in The Party Train, an anthology of prose poetry? Two days ago I wrote my first Ya-du poem, called Whitework … but I’ve submitted it to some journals. So, here is a recent winter haiku (since I just returned from the Davis Mountains). Frost dressed the aspens in the west Texas mountains— rapturous portals. My best winter memories were as a child, when I lived in the Mid-Atlantic states and would go sledding with my sister. Though I’m looking forward to that vaccine,… Read more »
Hi Sandra. It’s good to hear from you! I have Jim’s poem in a PDF file; I’ll email it to you.
I miss sledding. I can’t remember the last time I did it; decades, probably. As if there’s a law against adults sledding.
Winter has always been a favorite time of the year for me. The beauty of the white layer to the earth. The silent fall of soft flakes that turn the world around us into this glistening wonderland. I see it as a reprieve from the mundane colors we no longer appreciate until the landscape is covered in white. That bright orange leaf that hasn’t fallen is unmissable. Those dark green pines with white on their branches make you see them with all their majesty. One of my favorite scenes was one when I was a teen. I lived in western… Read more »
It’s a lovely scene, Barbara. Thanks for sharing it. It’s like a Bob Ross painting come to life. (Another favorite winter activity of mine — watching Bob Ross paint winter scenes, especially when he uses his palette knife to create cabins and mountains.)
It’s in the neighborhood of 1985. I’m upstairs in the little green six-room house I rent for a song in Woburn, MA, on a weekend when wet snow pelts my bedroom window. I don’t have to walk through the wind to the express bus, take that to Haymarket for the Orange Line, change to the Red Line at Downtown Crossing, then get off at Harvard and slog across Longfellow Bridge. Not today. Not tomorrow. Instead, I sit at a teak veneer desk I’ve never put together properly but that’s sturdy anyway, writing in a journal notebook covered in a stunning nylon brocade impersonating silk that… Read more »
(Whoops, make that the Lars Anderson Bridge, not Longfellow. Been a long time…)
I’ve read this twice now and will no doubt read it again. Thanks for sharing, Elissa. I’ve never been to Woburn, but I feel like I’ve walked past that house hundreds of times, and probably been inside. And suddenly I’m back in a Plymouth January, the “snowpocalypse/snowmageddon” heading our way, me tucked into a drafty “beach house” that’s stuffed with friends and books and enough supplies to get us through a long weekend during which we’ll slowly and then quickly lose our minds. By the end of the weekend, one us will find himself dressed in a burlap sack, head… Read more »
Love the image! Reminds me of P-Town in winter. Do you think you’ll ever finish that board game? (And which one was it?)
As coincidence would have it, the board game was Pandemic. I think it was all packed up at the end of the weekend. It’s in Sligo, Ireland, now. And the beach house itself is someone else’s concern. But some of the nicknames we created for the game remain.
P-town in winter is something I absolutely must experience. I think we’ve talked about the winter writing residency there? It’s my dream. And maybe one day it’ll come true. Although it would help if I actually, you know, applied for it.
Looked up the game on Wikipedia. How cool! It now has various expansions (including Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu). Seems to have gone viral. (I’ll see myself out…) My P-Town winter vacation occurred in the early 90s. A friend and I had stayed at Land’s End Inn. Luxury resort, low winter rates, and almost completely deserted. Quiet and enchanting, with a touch of spookiness. We mingled with the locals in town and did things like watch gulls wrestle mightily with nor’easter gusts and blowing snow over the Atlantic — from behind the window of a diner geared toward the grizzled. Those journal entries are knocking about somewhere. FAWC’s application… Read more »
Part of me wonders how I’d handle it, psychically. At some point, from what I understand, pretty much everything in town shuts down for the season (except for a few of those grizzly diners) and the weather becomes unbearable. Which leaves one with little to do but stay inside and… write?
Sounds like the social distancing winter that’s coming up. Albeit with fewer saltbox houses…
Winter.
How many bulbs and tiny bulbs lie beneath the cold, shimmering blankets of snow that hides them from the ambitious crow, the crow who seeks to devour them. This has been a year of anguish and distress, as dreams and hopes are gobbled by that crow borne of disease. But all is not lost, for the sun will soon awaken for those who have taken refuge beneath the icy cold; those who await the return of the warmth, when smiles will be visible again, the masks of fear discarded.
Happy Winters Solstice to all.
I used to love winter. I can easily bring up images, sounds, feelings, tastes and smells and even the emotions and memories not just those I’m having now but those that flooded in when I had the actual experience. From a thousand experiences I can feel cold, stiff numb fingers and toes and cheeks and the burn when they thawed out, from ice fishing, playing hockey, ice-skating, snow men and fort building, walking the dogs, cross-country skiing, sledding, tobogganing, snowmobiling, digging tunnels, digging out cars. snow ball battles, breaking off icicles and tasting them; there are a million of these.… Read more »
I can’t recall ever seeing someone grill bratwurst outside at -20. But I can imagine how heavenly they tasted. Did he grill the fish too?
He pan fried them, and they were always wonderful. He was usually very good with grilling brats burgers; steaks New Year’s Eve. I was ok on the grill, but more versatile; trout, vegies, mushrooms. Now I seldom use the grill. When we were looking for one, Sue wanted wood, I wanted gas; we settled on electric. Do you grill.
Nah. My dad did, though. He made a hell of a brat, too, just like yours: charred on the outside, juicy on the inside. If you often visited County Stadium in the late ’80s and early ’90s, there’s a not-absurd chance you saw a young me stuffing my face with one.
Stadium brats were killer. Went to one Brave game and a hand full of Brewer games, But saw the Packer kick ass the out of 4 times there. Miller Park is great but I miss seeing the Packers. But it’s safer on TV, restrooms and kitchen are closer at home. They beat the Eagles. Yea!
My brother and I had tickets to Opening Day at Miller Park (2001?). George Bush threw out the first pitch; Richie Sexson hit a game-winning homer late in the game. My brother and I watched it on the TV at the bar we sat in after selling our tickets for a bundle while pre-game tailgating.
Cool. Back at County, My x’s aunt was well off, she had a huge motorhome she took to games, eggs to order for tailgate, pre-Packer games. We were able to get Miller park tickets for cheap so we went to a bunch of games, but even though they had a winning record those years, we maybe saw one win. Back in the day, I went down and got Fingers, Molitor, Yount, and a bunch of others brewer greats in attendance on my hat. Sadly, that hat got rained on and all the names ran.
You did better than I. I lived next door to Molitor for a time; not only did I not get an autograph, I saw him only once. Jogging. He blew right past me. Little did he know that I already had his autograph. Years earlier, my aunt was his housecleaner. She got him to sign for me the cover of a magazine he was on.
This isn’t an interesting anecdote…
Cool. Still have his autograph?
I do still have it, somewhere in the darkest corners of my mom’s house.
Winter’s gift
In daylight
Cold and bleak
The season of decay
Earth prepares for spring
A new beginning
The endless cycle
At night
A magical transformation
Crystals of ice shimmer in the moon light
Appearing like fine glass beads
Impossible patterns of intricate design
Paint every surface
The loving touch of a master’s hand
Details beyond imagination
Uncountable points of light
Twinkle and shine
A wondrous gift
Wandering through this magical beauty
Who can deny His divine hand?
Thank you for sharing this, Gary. It’s lovely. You wrote it just for this?
Thank you. I wrote it a couple of years ago. But it seemed to fit.
There could be a sub-set of stories, just about driving in the snow. Every year, after the first snow, I would find an empty parking lot, and If I had a car that was new for me, I’d learn how it handled on ice and snow. Of course it was quite fun too. I guy I worked with flipped his bronco in a parking lot.
You want to get into a wintery mood, read the opening few pages of Stewart O’Nan’s Last Night at the Lobster. Driving in snow, a parking lot, Christmas, weed. It’s got it all.
(Preview available at Am*zon: https://www.amazon.com/Last-Night-Lobster-Stewart-ONan/dp/0143114425)
I don’t think I’ve been to a Red Lobster since the one near Northridge Mall shut down.
Sounds interesting; just bought the kindle.
Red Lobster: Long time for me as well. Early on they were great, but later they always screwed us with the endless crab legs, after seconds, they ignored you the rest of the night.
Oh good, let me know what you think.
Yeah, I’ve heard they’re trained to be harder of hearing/sight once a customer has had a refill of “endless” anything.
Just so you know; in the last couple weeks, I’ve written 3 pages. Not a lot but it moved a story ahead and is waaaay better than 1 page in 9 months.
That’s what I like to hear. Little by little by little, my friend.
Thank you.
Falling sparkling snow
Quiets the night and comforts my spirit
I am less than trivial compared to the beauty of dark snow
Lovely.
Getting there. I write non-fiction. I tried a lil poem there
1972, April 10th Beautiful, warm, sunny, morning; was at work laying oak flooring for Olkowski Flooring. I didn’t notice it start snowing, we called it a day at noon, but our cars were snowed in. Even if we had shovels, the road was two foot deep. A little later we decide to try to walk home (This job was in Palmyra, 20 miles from Waukesha) Luckily we got a ride from one of the Bielinski Homes drivers, Ed’s contractor. I remember for a bunch of reasons, opening day for the brewers, the adventure of it, we were snowed in for… Read more »
They flew in a helicopter with a blow dryer to try to clear the field!
Did not know that…
How TF is that almost fifty years ago? I wonder where that keg and beer mug ended up. Probably in some rich dude’s basement.
When I did water softener work in the 80s, I visited some rich peoples basements. Some were big enough and had high enough ceilings to fit that barrel in it.
The chalet is at Lakefront Brewery, and two people can eat inside. The mug is there too, as part of the brewery tour. I can’t find info about the keg, but I imagine it’s there as well?
So you were almost right! How did you even find this?
I guess Google, I think I searched Bernie Brewer chalet and Lakefront’s website came up. I also learned (did I already mention this?) that Bernie had a companion in the early and mid-’70s, Bonnie Brewer!
Did not know that. While I was a fan of the Braves in the 60s, I barely noticed sports, other than the Packers until the 80s when the bad marriage was over, and I wasn’t working 46 to 60 hour weeks.
Feels like the ’70s was a fine decade to ignore sports, at least Brewers- and Bucks-wise. Were you crushed when the Braves split town?
Not when the Braves left. I don’t think I was that heavy into them at 16. I was into girls, music, reading, cars, fishing, deer hunting and work When the Packers stopped having Milwaukee games, that sucked.
Winter.
How many bulbs and tiny bulbs lie beneath the cold, shimmering blankets of snow that hides them from the ambitious crow, the crow who seeks to devour them. This has been a year of anguish and distress, as dreams and hopes are gobbled by that crow borne of disease. But all is not lost, for the sun will soon awaken for those who have taken refuge beneath the icy cold; those who await the return of the warmth, when smiles will be visible again, the masks of fear discarded.
Happy Winters Solstice to all.
Thanks for this, Mary. I really enjoy it.
Thank you, David. I sent a correction to the opening line. Should have been “many bulbs and tiny seeds,” but I’m sure you understood that. One of these days, I hope to be able to join your wonderful classes (maybe if I get a stimulus check?) Meanwhile, I love prompts! Keep sending them :-)
I will keep doing them. We kind of dropped it for a long time, but I brought it back a few months ago and it feels like we’re all getting to know each other a lot better through our responses and conversations. Thanks for joining this one!
Thanks. Should be fun! :-)
Oops. That first line in my writing should have been “many bulbs and tiny seeds.”
I wrote some poetry in the 60s, they were even printed in the Hamilton’s literary magazine. My mother use to read poems to me from some book; everything had rhyme and rhythm. When poetry lost that, I lost interest. When in a writing group, they occasionally had a poetry prompt I usally ignored it, but for some reason I just wrote some prose, dropped un-needed words and broke it into poem-like pieces. I don’t read it; it doesn’t do anything for me, or to me, and I have expertise or self-credibility in judging it good, bad or ugly. Conversely, while… Read more »
David, you might be interested in the National Federation of State Poetry Societies: http://nfsps.com/ I was active for some years in the Florida State Poetry Association. NSFPF and the state societies pay attention to poetic forms, including rhyme and rhythm, and their contests are pretty cool.
A JOB OF WORK I used to have to coordinate my schedule with his. Midnights were out; if he worked graveyard St. Alphonso’s was screwed, at least as far as I was concerned. If he worked four-to-twelve he got home at twenty past midnight, unless there was overtime in which case he rolled in at 4:20 am. In those cases I was good for six-o-clock. He’d wake me with oatmeal at 5:15. A pat of salty butter in the Quaker’s and a small glass of milk. The tin pot of coffee blorking on the stove like a robot with hiccups.… Read more »
Holy hell do I love this line: “The tin pot of coffee blorking on the stove like a robot with hiccups.”
Have I ever recommended Stuart Dybek to you? There’s some Dybek in this, and not just in the Polish touches and the detail of the Mass. (Though it is very “The Woman Who Fainted.”)
I dont believe I’ve heard of Dybek or “The Woman Who Fainted”. The list of Things To Read grows ever longer…
Yeah. I have like twenty-three lifetimes’ worth of shit to read.
I live in Utah and generally, not a fan of winter. Makes you wonder why I live in a state known for “The Greatest Snow on Earth”, doesn’t it? Well, we are retired Air Force and this became ‘home’ after our last duty assignment and will remain home until we are led elsewhere. To that end, I typically dread winter – the cold, shoveling the driveway, driving, etc..but this year I have a completely different outlook. I am looking forward to curling up inside by the fireplace with my laptop. I have been on a book-writing journey since January 2019… Read more »
Thanks for sharing, Vivian. I cannot think of a better way to spend a winter, nor of a better reason to look forward to its onset.