No answer, really. But when I first started writing about Morgan and Amy, Kevin and Jim, it was in the teeth of an ice-storm right at the start of the New Year of 1973. It was a monumental ice-storm, one that kept the power off for days. And nights.
I would go to work, come home to my parents' house on Concord Rd. in Smyrna, Georgia, and it would smell of wood fire. The smell would be the only warm part of the house. Mama was working, too; Papa had retired after years of health issues and now was at home taking care of my Grandmother...Papa's mother...who was nearly bedridden in this freezing house. We would warm up something on the fire for supper. Mama would tend to Grandmother, I would head off to bundle up on my bed with my pen and paper.
It was a cold, dark time. It was magical. I felt as if I had a bubbling cauldron of this new Family, with their stories, conversations, personalities, events, adventures...all bursting to come out onto my paper. And they did.
Hours would slip by. My hand would begin to hurt. There was a deep dent in my third finger where the pen pressed, red from cold and friction of writing. The pages didn't hold enough words; I had to find more paper, new spiral notebooks. Exhausted, at last, I would sleep.
I let Papa read some. I never let anyone read anything I read, but this was different. These people I had uncovered were different. Papa came back and beamed at me. I laughed like hell, he told me.
That still warms my heart to think of.
I still write best in cold, dark times. Some of the worst times of my life, when foster kids were challenging, when times were hard, when grief came or failure grabbed me....those were good writing times. Maybe it is, as they say, grist for the mill. Somehow that seems odd. You would think that you would need to look back on the bad times, to ponder them, for them to be grist for the mill.
Maybe it is a retreat from the bad times. I know that this alter-reality, or as my daughter, Brynn calls it: "Your twisted alter-family", has helped me reset my day and carry on. I don't know.
Whatever the reason, when autumn comes and the days get cooler, I get that writing feeling in my gut. That adventurous, expectant feeling as I wait for the wail of cold wind and sleet and flickering lamplight and freezing hands as I try to get the kindling to catch in the buck stove.
And I open up my laptop, with Mama's shawl around me.
Knowing that, if the power goes out....I still have my pen and paper. And more McKenna adventures to spin.