Stormy Weather

The wind a couple of nights ago was ferocious, howling at my windows and inspiring my garden tools to clamour and riot. I went out, pyjama-clad, dressing gowned, and hastily shod, and shoved everything in the garage, where it subsided. My gardening this spring has been very limited, but I threw wildflower and herb seeds over my mostly-weeded lavender bed last week. I hope the wind has left some of it behind. I like to be kind to bees.

Weather that matches the protagonist’s mood in a piece of fiction is called a piece of pathetic fallacy. Not pathetic as in something to be scorned or pitied, but the older meaning of “emotional”. It relies on doing what humans dearly love to do, which is impinge ourselves upon the natural world by giving it human motivation and emotion.

In fact, the wind wasn’t actually ferocious; it was fast-moving air arising from a number of complicated meteorological elements, incapable of malice or ill intent. In fact, the world doesn’t reflect my emotions, but vice versa - grey skies make me sad, rain at night makes me feel pleasantly cosy, and spring winds pick me up out of myself, give me a good shake, and put me back down, brain handily rattled into some new configuration.

But in fiction, I get to employ the pathetic fallacy if I feel like it, and particularly when characters experience emotionally stormy weather. Don and Hera are going through some of that, especially because their antagonist is based on Zeus, a major inspiration for my ground-breaking Comparative Religion thesis, “Most Sky Gods Are Assholes: Why Patriarchy Is Bad for the Climate”. I’m not saying I’m writing a thunderstorm at a particularly opportune moment, but I’m not-not saying that.

Spring cleaning

I spent my Saturday off deep-tidying and rearranging my living room, partly because it was a mess and I was getting sick of telling people to sit carefully on the chair with the wobbly leg, and mostly because I’m writing Hera Takes Charge and Don is big into interior design.

I am basically a knowledge magpie who is curious about everything, always, and loves bringing back shiny new facts to my nest, but this gets more intense and focused when I’m writing. I’m subscribing to home design newsletters and scrolling through #homeinspo the same way I looked through art books for Persephone and went nuts on fashion and celebrity newsletters for Aphrodite.

This is a useful habit for picking up the vibes, but it also means that I have to have a firm talk to myself before I dive into a new hobby I absolutely don’t have the time or money for. Rearranging the living room? Yes. Finally putting my art up on my walls? Yes!

Buying, stripping and repainting vintage furniture? No, Karen, no.

Soundtracks

I know some authors who have meticulous writing playlists, and some who need dead silence, and others who write in coffee shops or libraries to the busy hum of humanity.

Personally, I find different books need different soundtracks. I use music as a guide to the feeling of the book. Persephone in Bloom was written mostly to witchy folk music and Southern Gothic songs. Aphrodite Unbound was bubblegum pop with a feminist edge.

Hera Takes Charge is all jazz classics and torch songs. I’m writing her story accompanied by big orchestrations and the powerful voices of women like Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday, Julie London, Dinah Washington and Lena Horne.

It’s the wrong period, but the perfect vibe. Hera provides a carefully curated and controlled version of herself to the world, but inside there’s a lot of emotion roiling.

Gotta watch out for those storms.

After all, as I was reminded yesterday when I walked along the river, just because the wind isn’t malicious doesn’t mean it can’t be dangerous.

Wishing you good weather,

Karen.