Why I love to write books set in winter
Ever since I lived in a remote cottage on Sheriffmuir during a winter of terrible blizzards, snowed in without electricity, power, phone reception, and even water at one point, I have always been inspired by the idea of writing stories with a wintery setting. Not all of my stories are set in winter, but some are - in particular of course CHILL and SHIVER. It was the winter of 1995/6, and I had just moved up from London with my small family - our son was a year old at the time. I spent my childhood living in the country, and breathing in the drama of Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (I still have my old-fashioned annotated school copy, with its smell of nostalgia); so when I saw the cottage to rent up on Sheriffmuir 'far from the madding crowd', I thought "yes, that's a place where things might happen." Things did happen, and those things inspired me to write.
I have never forgotten the beauty of the landscape that winter, the mesmerizing silence, the stillness, all the trees transformed into glass sculptures. It reminded me of that scene in the old Doctor Chivago movie, where they find a frozen house in the middle of nowhere, completely covered in ice like a white sculpture.
The opportunities for atmospheric and descriptive writing are immense with a winter setting, particularly for ghost stories. Automatically you have an atmosphere of mystery.
Having said that, I've just spent a long summer sitting under the trees in my garden with a thick (quite expensive) notebook on my lap, and wrote 50,000 words of a wartime adventure story. Even Scotland was hot... and it didn't affect my inspiration. In fact I wrote more than I usually do. I kept up a good rhythm of 2,000 words a day.
Another good habit I've got into lately is cycling into the countryside with same notebook, and writing on the steps of a little abandoned chapel I know. Secret location. Prime inspiration. Bit spooky as well... once or twice I was scribbling away in a world of my own, glanced up and suddenly felt watched. Expected to see a figure looking at me. So...
I have never forgotten the beauty of the landscape that winter, the mesmerizing silence, the stillness, all the trees transformed into glass sculptures. It reminded me of that scene in the old Doctor Chivago movie, where they find a frozen house in the middle of nowhere, completely covered in ice like a white sculpture.
The opportunities for atmospheric and descriptive writing are immense with a winter setting, particularly for ghost stories. Automatically you have an atmosphere of mystery.
Having said that, I've just spent a long summer sitting under the trees in my garden with a thick (quite expensive) notebook on my lap, and wrote 50,000 words of a wartime adventure story. Even Scotland was hot... and it didn't affect my inspiration. In fact I wrote more than I usually do. I kept up a good rhythm of 2,000 words a day.
Another good habit I've got into lately is cycling into the countryside with same notebook, and writing on the steps of a little abandoned chapel I know. Secret location. Prime inspiration. Bit spooky as well... once or twice I was scribbling away in a world of my own, glanced up and suddenly felt watched. Expected to see a figure looking at me. So...
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Life Through A Window
Alex Nye writes about life at the creative rock-face, offering tips and remedies along the way. She writes about the books she loves, where she reads them, what they mean to her, and she writes about
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