On Making Weather

Welp, I made it 4 days into last week’s 6-day writing spree before the kiddo got sick. While 4,000 new words is not 6,000 new words, it’s better than zero new words, so I’ll take it!

I naturally worry about losing momentum on my projects when setbacks like this happen. For the entire pandemic, the setback has almost always been the temporary loss of childcare due to either our own kid being sick (the worst, because then we’re also sleep-deprived/miserable) or a COVID exposure within our daycare community (still tough due to juggling work and kid, and then there’s the added anxiety of COVID). I’m sure all the other parents out there can relate!

But I’ve decided that this rollercoaster is challenging enough without adding worries about what it’s doing to my writing.

I’ve written before about my love for/obsession with Columbus, and one of the most impressive things about that film is that it was shot on location over just 18 days, so the cast and crew were basically at the mercy of the weather. They couldn’t afford to lose a day if it rained; it just meant that the shot would have rain. Kogonada said, “It ended up being a really great thing because it added its own mood and context. You can't ever plan for weather, unless you have a huge budget and you can make weather.” 

I can’t make weather. I can’t control most of the life stuff that is happening around my projects, and it’s going to have an effect on both what I write and how long it takes. But I also can’t imagine Columbus without all those rainy scenes, so maybe that’s not necessarily a bad thing.