Karen Sandler

Tag: seasons

  • RTW – Writing and the Change of the Seasons

    This week, YA Highway‘s Road Trip Wednesday asks, How does your writing (place, time, inspiration) change with the seasons?

    It’s a great question but I’m afraid I don’t have a particularly great answer. As a writer, my routine is kind of boring, and, well, routine. I don’t change anything with the seasons.

    I just sit at the same computer, in the same office, and whether I’m under contract and working on a deadline, or writing some spec piece, I just…write. I work nearly every day. There are times I take a break (like between contracts) when I go a few days or even a week or so without writing. But then a new contract starts or I settle in on a new spec project and I’m back to the routine.

    Ye Olde Grindstone

    I confess, I’m not exactly sure what I would do differently. I don’t find any particular season any more inspiring than another. If I’m on deadline, I just work. I do dislike deadlines that around Christmas (like if something is due in January), because I just want to kick back and bake cookies and decorate my tree and enjoy the season. But it’s not like I suddenly get ideas for holiday stories.

    Am I boring or what? At least my son, who’s got a YA circulating out there and is currently working on a MG book, goes out on the back deck to write on lovely summer days. I just stay in my cubicle, taking root and growing mushrooms between my toes.

    I really want to hear from other people on this. Do you have a seasonal ebb and flow with your creativity? Do you write differently at different times of the year? Drop me a line. I’d appreciate a break from my grindstone.

  • Mystery of Spring

    When I lived in Los Angeles, I never really experienced spring. It was generally cool in winter and warm in summer, but there wasn’t that explosion of newness in April like there is here in Northern California. In L.A., there were peculiarities like 100 degrees in January that confused the heck out of my peach tree and the annual June gloom (day after day of overcast) before summer really kicked into gear. But no definitive seasons.

    But other than the false spring in February that tends to fool us every year, we do have real seasons here in the foothills. Plenty of rain, hail, frost and the occasional snowfall in winter, blistering hot dry days in summer and wonderful green springs and red-gold autumns.

    The coolest part of spring is seeing my garden come to life.In particular, I am utterly enamored of tulips. I’ve never had tulips growing in my very own garden. When we pulled out our lawn and replaced it with gravel pathways that meander through flowerbeds filled with hardy water-stingy plants, tulips were included in the design. The colors are just so amazing and the flowers are so long-lasting, seeing them outside my window lifts my spirits. They are such a wonderful messenger of spring.

    Another delight this spring was the appearance of a mystery flower in my front yard. I’m used to volunteers popping up. Red pyracantha berries are a favorite of birds and their droppings sprout those prickly shrubs all over the yard. I even have a 25+ foot tall valley oak tree in the back yard that wasn’t here when we moved in. According to the local Master Gardeners mystery plant is a Harlequin flower from a sparaxis bulb.

    In addition to tulips, it’s always exciting to see the redbud bloom. A native shrub around here, it’s often the first color I see, its magenta flower a beautiful contrast to the dull green surrounding it. Then there’s the massive wall of wisteria that covers my backyard pergola. Our wisteria is monstrously large, its whip-like runners sometimes reaching twenty feet or more up into our redwoods. I sometimes wonder if that wisteria will be knocking on the door someday, demanding entrance.

    A few more pretty photos: