April Showers Bring Lots of Mud

Okay, that's not how the saying goes, but despite only being three days into the month that's the way it feels. Of course, around here the calendar is no indication of season anyway. They're calling for snow again overnight. (And I wonder why I'm having trouble keeping my daughter cold-free when we've had several days when the temperature fluctuated by around thirty degrees from low to high.) The only upside to all the muck and mess, especially out in the country, is that eventually it does lead to all the pretty things of springs.

While I could wax poetic about the flowers and such, ostensibly this is a writing-oriented blog and there is a writing-related point to it. I've lived places and visited places where the seasons didn't change much, where you had flowers blooming pretty much year round, and while they were nice, they lacked something. At least to my mind, the flowers here are nicer because we have to endure all the foul weather to get to them. It makes the transition out of Winter into Spring more appreciated (regardless of the fact that I can never remember whether the seasons should be capitalized or not) and the flowers seem prettier for having not seen them for months.

The finished product of a story is like that, too. (See, told you there was a point.) While I'd like to be able to sit down and just churn out a story, I think the finished product has a bit more satisfaction to it from having had to endure the whole process. Not that it wouldn't be tempting to trade in the process for instant completion, mind you, but there have been plenty of times where the process has taken the original story in a different direction. Had there not been that shift in direction, the new story that emerged might likely never have bloomed.

Have I done the metaphor to death yet?

Likewise, those stories that I have managed to just crank out from start to finish don't ever seem to read as well - not just to me but to others - as the ones that took more time to germinate. I think you have to put up with the rain, the mud, the occasional Easter snow, and all the rest, before you get a garden full of blooms.

And with that, I think the metaphor's well and truly dead. Time to go look at the flowers.