Like Faliing Snow

I moved my family to the side of ski mountain over three years ago, for reasons that are still slowly being revealed to me.

As I sit at my kitchen table, a recently finished bowl of soup to my right and the crackling expansion of the wood fire stove behind me, I am witnessing the tenderness of freshly falling snow. It’s deep winter here. My son and his dad are throwing their able bodies down the snow covered ski trails cut into forests covering this huge hunk of skyward reaching earth.

I am alone to witness perhaps my favorite of all earthly phenomena.

Big, fat heavy flakes slowly making their way down to the ground. The sky is a perfectly purply grey. The trees bare and dutifully cradling the snow of two days ago in the crooks of their resting branches.

It’s stunning. It’s simple. It’s effortless. It’s love.

I grew up in Houston, Texas. I did not have a childhood rich with snow. In Texas, it was just plain hot. We weathered terenchale rains and hurricanes, heat and its twisted sister, humidity. There’s a hardness in my bones from my 18 years surviving in that place. I also carry a steamy effervesants, that’ll fire off a scalding quip, like an escape valve might when the highly pressurized contents have just gotten too damn hot.

How does this apply to my writing practice? Stay with me.

My partner, who was born in Norway, but grew up in the “New England” climate of the north eastern coastal United States has a favorite Norwegian expression: “ There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.” The wisdom being, humans are highly competent and adaptive beings who can be prepared to meet all kinds of conditions. If you are cold, put on some warmer garments. If you are too hot, move somewhere with winter. Like I did.

I’ll admit that my enjoyment of the snow is related to being able to witness it from the comfort of my warm home. I know a lot of people who journey to the tropics to escape the conditions I, personally, would never want to do without.

But back to writing. This is meant to be an elaborate metaphor, my favorite writerly phenomena to pair with this snowy day. Just like other arts, what constitutes ‘good’ and ‘bad’ weather (and writing) is entirely subjective. Controversial opinion warning: There’s no such thing as bad writing.

We can all have our preferences. Agree there are more and less effective ways to communicate certain things, if we have an express goal in mind. But I prefer to think of writing as sticking my head out the window to see what my internal weather is like today. There is no bad way to do that.

Today, I can appreciate that it is snowing and that I made the decision to start writing.

In case you suffer from the meanest lie going, I want to tell you: We can’t be “bad at writing.”

Writing is bigger than that. The written word speaks to all parts of us. It’s an organizing force, not unlike the weather. The writings and stories we familiarize ourselves with, shape the people we become, the communities we’re drawn to, the landscape of our internal lives where it ultimately rests and resides… but writing can’t live inside the binary of moral judgement.

My writing doesn’t like to speak to me if I’ve decided it’s “bad.”

Like the weather, different circumstances necessitate different ways and approaches to communicate those. Humans are wildly inventive and how that comes out is never “incorrect.” Ever. Not even ever. okay?

I yearn for writing that is soft, delicate, gentle and disorienting as falling snow. It’s the antidote to the language that came from my childhood environment that was hot, full bodied, aggressive, confronting, assertive, bombastic, destructive and almost suffocating.

Let’s be clear: Just because I’m not personally a fan of that kind of language doesn’t make it “bad.” It’s just not how I prefer to express myself. That doesn’t make me “bad.” Bad is a terribly limiting idea. Get it?

If you believe that you suffer from bad writing, ask yourself who gave you that idea? Maybe they just aren’t comfortable in the snow.

As a writer and writing facilitator, I strive to grow my capacity to experience and witness all kinds of written expression. I believe there is room for all of it. The more I allow myself to bear witness to the words that want to drift, pour or rage through me and others, the more pleasantly surprised I am at the complexity of this human condition.

That’s the point. We writers are merely working at articulating what it’s like to be a person living today. My account is going to differ from every other person’s account. Because of course it is.

I celebrate my good fortune to be a part of this human experience and am so grateful that I feel called to help other humans feel free to be their most expressive and authentic writerly selves.

Let’s agree to quit telling ourselves we are bad at writing. Just for today. Sometime’s it’s okay just to let it snow.