The Wind Blew or did it?

"It was a dark and stormy night." We all know the purple phrase iconic for the struggle of writers to find their voice.

How does one find their voice when writing? For me it comes bellowing, sometimes screaming out of me when I do a release and catch. This morning on my bike ride, a level 4.2 miles in the undulating bucolic town of Eureka Springs. I enjoyed the cooler a.m. temperatures.

As I take notes in my mind. I say the wind blew. Wha? What kind of writer would say that? A fifth grader could do better.

Then I leap to the sensual. The wind caressed the earth. AACH! Victorian trite. So, what was the wind doing? It was diluting the escalating heat like cool water. What? I kind of like that. Let’s twist it up a bit to give the readers a little surprise with their cereal.

Like cool water, the morning breeze wind diluted the escalating heat. Okay, now we’re getting somewhere, a nicely turned phrase as some would say.

It was on my mind, while changing gears on subtly changing road grades, that I was enjoying the Covid-19 quarantine way too much. This was evidenced by how excited I got when I saw two horses clutched together head to butt who were swatting the flies in an elegant approach to using their tails to the benefit of both. I wondered if their elders had taught them this, or this method was happenstance for them.

Admittedly I have been trying to put my head into what animals might think as I write about Cloud, a ghost seeing white German Shepperd who lives in a haunted hotel in San Francisco.

No, its not a children’s story but a paranormal thriller for adults. Each of us has a small child within us that takes joy in considering the impossible.

I do, don’t you?