I am having the book launch party for my first novel this weekend! I won’t make you listen to me read, or make you buy a book, but there will be wine and cheese to share and I’d love some friendly faces while this introvert tackles her first public event. 😁
It’ll be held at the Kilted Mermaid, which is my favie favie spot in Vero Beach. Come and enjoy some of their fondue and wine on me! Because oh my gosh, I finally finished a book! 🤣
Book Description:
A book of spells. Memories in the snow. And nowhere to run.
Lumi thought she’d escaped her past, but when she falls in love with a man from the far north, she leaves the safety of her life in libraries and follows him into the mysterious world of Arctic Town, a domed city where tourists play the part of frontiersmen and the birds watch her every move.
Lumi begins making a home in the boreal wilderness, until the snow starts falling at autumn’s end. To her dismay, each flake brings stray memories from other lives: The plague doctor. The homesteader with blood splattered on his walls. The charging bear with human eyes. And when Lumi finds out she is pregnant, her only escape is a grimoire, a book of spells that she knows she must keep hidden.
But it all comes crashing down when Lumi’s log cabin home is crushed in an avalanche and she is forced back on the run through the never-ending snow and a flood of memories threatens to drive her mad. Out in the snow, They start coming for her–the dark shapes between the shadows. Driven out, hungry, and at the edge of insanity, help comes from the least likely of allies and the memories begin to fall into place.
Image Description: Background of the aurora borealis in the night sky over a snowy, magical wonderland. In the foreground, there are pictures of the ebook and paperback of The Snow Witch, by Jaclyn Wilmoth. There is a picture of the author as well. The text says, “Book Launch Party, March 5, 5:30-7:00pm, Kilted Mermaid, 1937 Old Dixie Highway, Vero Beach.”
This post is an excerpt from the fantasy novel The Snow Witch, by Jaclyn Wilmoth. You can find The Snow Witch at all major retailers in both ebook and paperback by clicking here.
The forest made different sounds in the snow. The wind whistled in winter, and sometimes even howled, as if the sharp points of the quakenbush’s bare branches were cutting its belly. Still, there was a beauty to it, and to Lumi, a novelty.
Cole had noticed that she had been spending more time in the cabin since it started snowing and encouraged her to go outside, which she had been avoiding, and take a walk, which she almost never did alone.
This stretch of road looked so strange, like a whole other planet from the road Lumi had come to love in the summer. In summer, the willowherb grew taller than her. By August, it was so tall that it could barely hold itself up and the stalks bowed in toward the path so that it created a little tunnel for her to walk through. Now the stalks had turned to hard, hollow paper and the flowers had erupted into small tufts of smokey seeds, waiting to be carried off by the wind. These were the last of the seeds, the ones that weren’t taken in time. Snowflakes rested on them.
She listened harder to the sounds. A raven. A squirrel. A crunch. Lumi glanced over her shoulder, wondering if she had in fact heard someone. The forest was still.
It was unlikely. They were far enough away from the small village nearby that there wasn’t much foot traffic. It was probably more likely an animal. And yet.
As her foot stepped down onto the snow, she felt a different texture below her foot. And then, snaps. She looked down to a pile of feathers, partially covered over with snow. As she stooped, she saw what had snapped. Bones.
They were bigger than she had expected, but unmistakable. Swampland crane bones. She reached down to brush the snow away. The bones were nearly as large as her own arm bones.
And there it was again, that crunch. She looked behind her and held her breath. Silence again.
She rubbed a finger over the smoothness of the bone. The snow melted on her fingertips, and pulled her into a memory.
*
I stand on the bridge and actually, the water looks completely still from here. It must be moving, flowing, but the river looks like it is holding its breath, waiting to see if I will really do it. There’s a reverberation on the water, a ping that catches my eye. Then another, and another. I pull on the sapphire earrings that are swishing in the rain. A gift from Luis that I would never wear in public. A secret all our own. The wet tinkling makes a melody that will stay with me.
The tears are freezing on my face. They pull at my skin as I try to wipe them away. I am so far up. It’s so, so far. Like I have climbed a mountain. Like the whole world is below.
Only it’s just water. Just the swirl of river against rock. Just a gray that doesn’t stop. I can feel it. I can feel the kicking beneath my navel. I can feel the way even it wants out of this body.
The wind is pushing me back, trying to keep me on the bridge. It doesn’t know. Doesn’t know the way the world works, that what awaits me surely must be worse than death.
The water is pulling and the wind is pushing and I know that it’s me that has to break the tie.
It is beginning to rain. All those raindrops have fallen so much farther than I would. And when they land, they disappear. They are home. I want that too.
I lean my shoulders forward and put my arms out wide.
Then I feel hands on my belly.
*
Lumi was certain she heard footsteps then. The swish in the snow of quick strides. She turned toward the noise, and another snowflake skimmed her cheek and another memory overtook her.
*
A crane steps gingerly onto the riverbank in front of me.
It is purposeful in the way it moves, silent. It looks me in the eye. They have come.
It is our bodies that the whole pandemic revolves around. So here I am, lover of all the sick, on my knees in the river. The commonality in all cases is our own bodies, and so the whole village has come to watch, to make sure that we are washed away by the water. I look toward Hannah. There are, at least, others with me. I try to send her this thought, to draw her attention to the crane. She won’t look. Her eyes are scared from beneath her mask and the long beak of it is quivering. I hope that it still smells of the calming herbs.
But it is our bodies that cared for each of those bleeding, melting bodies. And yet, we are not sick. We held the dying and comforted their souls, and now they are sure that we must be witches.
Another crane calls above us. I hope that They see.
It is our bodies that cleanse the wounds, and so they demand to see. Amid the jeers, I can hear the sob of my mother. My clothes are torn off. But all I see are bubbles as the water rushes past my face.
*
Lumi didn’t remember Cole finding her whimpering. She didn’t remember him pulling her out of a huddled ball in the snow, heaving for air. She didn’t remember the walk home or him wrapping her in blankets next to the woodstove or how long they sat there in silence.
All she remembered were the visions in the snowflakes.
Jaclyn Wilmoth lives in the boreal forest of Alaska, where she teaches creative writing, grows very large kohlrabi with her husband, and tries to keep her daughter away from no-no mushrooms and berries. Hauling water is her least favorite chore.
Find more of my creative writing here. You can check out prompts and inspiration for your own writing here. And for posts about how to add more magic into your own life, click here.
How do you keep writing when it feels like the world is burning? This post offers some advice on how to keep writing in uncertain times. Break through writer’s block and find motivation to write when times are tough. Your writing is important even in difficult times. This post will help you get back to work.
How to Keep Writing When It Feels Like the World Is Burning
I don’t know about you all, but I am tired of living in unprecedented times. It seems like the “unprecedented” hits just keep on coming: wildfires, pandemics, hurricanes, grid failures, winter storms, political strife, and even war.
You are a writer because you feel things, because you see what is happening around you and you’re moved by it. Maybe you are particularly affected by it even, because writing takes a kind of empathy and observation that not everyone has. But this is exactly why you need to do it. It is the most important time for you to make art.
You are a writer—writing is what you are here to do. It’s not selfish of you to keep writing in difficult, uncertain times. In fact, you need to do it.
It’s not easy. Even Toni Morrison wrote about feeling the crushing weight of everything happening in the world and not being able to write because of it. There’s something comforting to me in the idea that even a writer as seasoned and accomplished as Toni Morrison also felt the difficulty of sitting down at the desk in hard times. As important and influential as her work is, she too felt the resistance to creativity when times were tough.
But her advice to herself is important for us all to remember:
“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
Step 1: Remember Why Writing is Important
This is probably the most important step. If you take no other steps today (even writing!), take this one. Your writing is important. Remind yourself why it is important, why the world needs it. Even if all your writing does is make yourself feel better, that has made the world a better place. Peace begins within each of us. Find your peace.
There are many reasons to keep writing, even in the face of overwhelming global hardships. Here are just a few of them:
Writers bear witness. If you write about what is happening in the world or your experience of current events, you help shape the way that future generations understand the events happening around you. Write what is happening, as you see it.
Writers offer solace. Everyone is having feelings about political situations, global crises, and massive upheavals. Not everyone has the ability to put words to these emotions, but you do, my friend. When you put your thoughts onto the page, you are giving voice to others who may not be able to form their experiences into words. There are others out there who feel the same way you do; giving voice to your experience will also give voice to theirs. It is comforting when you find the words you need to express yourself. It makes people feel seen. Your writing can be a comfort.
Writers offer relief. I know it is not easy to keep writing your fantasy novel when it feels like there is way more important stuff happening in the world. Climate change. Pandemic. War, even. It can be easy to succumb to the feeling that whatever writing you are working on is trivial unless it directly addresses whatever the current problems are. But people don’t just need to be informed or enlightened about what is happening in front of them. Sometimes they also need a break. Sometimes they need to allow themselves to get lost in art so that they can come back to the world refreshed and able to do something. You can offer that break. You can give them that relief.
Step 2: Take care of yourself.
We writers can be sensitive types. This is part of why we are good at writing. But in times like these, being sensitive is not easy. It’s not all creativity and dreaming and intuition. It is also empathy and compassion and suffering at the thought of others suffering. Sometimes it is also vicarious trauma. (Here is a helpful article about how to ease vicarious trauma if you are feeling that.)
If you are not feeling up to writing, you probably need to do something to take care of yourself.
I know there’s a lot of talk these days about self-care, but it really is important. You can’t get to work unless you take care of yourself first. So do what you need to do to get yourself right. Take a walk. Meditate. Take a bath. Bake a cake. Find solace in poetry. Do something to help if that makes you feel better. Whatever you need to do to get yourself in a mindset that is grounded and safe. Here is a huge list of ideas for different ways to take care of yourself. Pick one and help yourself feel better.
You need to take care of yourself so that you can do the necessary work.
Step 3: Change your plans.
I was going to create a post today about candles for creativity, but that seemed ridiculous right now given what’s happening in the world. I am a planner. Every quarter, I make detailed writing plans and I have goals, dammit! But working on that blog post didn’t feel right.
Then there was the part of me that wanted to just have some wine and watch MasterChef and try to tune it all out.
Instead, I am here writing through tears.
It’s not easy. It’s not easy to keep going. There’s suffering and frustration and heartache and sadness and anger and injustice and all of it might be rattling around in your chest, in your brain, in your gut. So maybe writing that meet cute you had planned is simply not going to happen today.
Maybe you need to change your plan. How can you move forward given the emotions you have? Maybe it’s just journaling. Maybe you just need to get your own feelings out so you can get back to your project. Maybe you can channel those feelings into another scene, or another project all together. Or maybe you need to write about what’s happening around you in the best way you can. Give yourself the grace to let go of whatever you had planned to be working on and allow yourself to respond to what you need. That is what the world needs.
Step 4: Channel your feelings.
This brings us to a related step. Change your plans so that you can channel your feelings. Find a way to make something beautiful out of what you are feeling. That is your superpower as a writer, to take conflict and uncomfortable feelings and to make them into something exquisite. There are several ways to do this.
Journal. You might just journal to get your feelings out. This can actually be really helpful in getting yourself to a good place. Maybe it doesn’t feel important to journal, but most writers begin writing because it offers us some kind of relief. If you can get your fears and rage out on the page, they are no longer taking up space in your head. These prompts might help if you need a place to start.
Write the situation. Maybe you can’t move forward on what you had planned to work on today, but that doesn’t mean you can’t create something. Let yourself write an unexpected poem. Document the chaos from your perspective. Write a letter to someone about what’s happening. Sometimes the most important writing is not planned, sometimes it’s what wells up from within when the unexpected knocks us down. Allow yourself to let those unexpected feelings well up. It could be the most important writing you ever do.
Find the connections. Another way to channel your feelings but also move forward in your work is to find the connections between what you are feeling and the project you had planned to work on. Maybe this is the day you write that heart-wrenching scene. Maybe the wrench you throw your character is a pandemic, a forest fire, a war across the globe that somehow touches her life. Maybe you channel your anger into dialogue with the villain. Think of the butterfly effect. Everything is touched by even small actions across the globe. There are definitely connections between what you are working on and world events.
Find something that makes sense for you. How can you create something useful, something beautiful? How can you give a gift to the world formed from the chaos?
Step 5: Write.
And then, you have to get to work. Like Toni Morrison said, there’s no time for self-pity, no room for fear. There’s no more important time to be writing than now. By all means, remember your why and take care of yourself and channel your feelings and change your plans. But then, write.
Do not let yourself give in to the feeling that you are powerless or that there is nothing you can do. Do not let them fool you into thinking that creating art is not important.
As John F. Kennedy said, “Strength takes many forms, and the most obvious forms are not always the most significant… When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.”
Whatever you do, you need to sit down and write. That is how civilizations heal.
If you need help getting started, you might think about creating a writing ritual to lower the threshold for beginning. Or you might try a prompt to get the words flowing.
And if you still can’t write, go back to step one. Think again about why it matters and take care of yourself. Give yourself some grace. The words will come.
It’s a new moon today. A time for listening within. A time for setting intentions. It has been making me think a lot about my whys. Why do NaNoWriMo? Why write? What exactly am I hoping to accomplish?
As the days get shorter and my energy wanes, it seems a herculean task to expect myself to write more than I do at any other time of year. Especially as the to-dos pile up with the holidays and the end of the year.
And yet…
I still do NaNoWriMo. Even after losing the first six times, like a glutton for pain and disappointment, I still wanted to do it. Why?
Why do NaNoWriMo?
I have heard people give a lot of reasons about why they do NaNo.
Camaraderie. If you ask a WriMo why they do it, so many will answer that it’s the camaraderie. And the community of it is huge. There are tons of authortubers who take part. Facebook and Instagram are covered in it. There are groups for local participants, groups for participants in different genres. You can go around the world on discord or write for 100 hours straight on youtube. Even as an introvert, you feel like you are part of something larger.
The Challenge. Sometimes you just need something to kick you into overdrive. I love a challenge (see my posts on writing challenges and submission bonanzas) and I think of NaNoWriMo as a dare. Who said I couldn’t finish a novel in a month? I’ll show them!
Taking yourself more seriously. You can’t sit around waiting for inspiration to strike when you are on a deadline like this, even if it is self-imposed. You just need to get your butt in the chair and do the best work you know how to do. Get down to business.
Taking yourself less seriously. This is maybe counterintuitive, to take on a big challenge like this to take yourself less seriously, but hear me out. You cannot be precious about your words and your work when you are trying to write a novel in a month.
Finally finishing something. While I think most winners of NaNoWriMo come out on December 1st with a completely ready-to-go book, I do think the premise requires you to stick with one project. You can’t follow your shiny object syndrome and finish a novel in a month. And then, once you are 50,000 words in, you might as well just finish.
Why do I do NaNoWriMo?
We all have very different reasons for coming to the page, and NaNoWriMo is no exception. For me personally, it is about building my consistency as a writer. I have been writing stories since I could write, and yet it has never been consistent. My writing always seemed best when it was bursting out of me, and I just had to wait for that to come. I could sit down and vomit up something in 15 minutes that would be beautiful or sit down and work for hours on something that was crap. I felt like my writing, my muse, my creativity was not something I could control myself.
But I am working on developing a different relationship with my writing. I am learning to create the space for the writing to come, to allow it even in the quiet times, to listen for it even when I am not inspired. And NaNoWriMo helps me build that muscle. The camaraderie and the challenge and the feeling of accomplishment are awesome. But for me, the biggest gain is the exercise, the practice, the slow and steady development of my ability to sit down each day and create.
What’s your why?
Here’s my update
Progress:
Day 3 Word Count: 1089
Total Word Count: 5169
This puts me just a little bit behind where I had hoped to be today. But also, just this much is more than I wrote in all of October, and on track according to the 1667 words everyday math. So I am happy with that, but I am going to have to put in extra work today if I want to take give myself a break on Friday!
Write about a new connection being made because of COVID-19. This might be an essay or poem about your real life experience, or you can create a story of a fictional connection.
What new connections have been made because of COVID-19? This could be connections with others, connections with yourself, connections with a place, etc. Write the story of this connection. How did it come to be? Why is it important? What are the possibilities of where this connection will go?
This post is part of a series I am doing that includes 30 prompts for 30 days of sheltering at home. You can read more about my reasoning and also find other prompts here. I would love to see what you come up with. Feel free to share here or to tag your work #shelterandwrite.
Find a work of visual art about COVID-19 that moves you. You could consider these works of street art. It could be a photograph from the news. It could even be a meme, a cartoon, or anything visual that you might tie to the pandemic.
Write a piece in which this work of art comes to life. Describe the art for us in detail. What is the context of the visual moment that you see? Who are the people depicted? Who is behind the art? Why did you choose this piece, and why is it evocative to you? What does this image not show?
This post is part of a series I am doing that includes 30 prompts for 30 days of sheltering at home. You can read more about my reasoning and also find other prompts here. I would love to see what you come up with. Feel free to share here or to tag your work #shelterandwrite.
Write about someone who is affected by COVID-19 in a very different way than you are. You could imagine someone fictional or write about someone you know. You could even imagine what it is like to be someone whose story you have heard but you do not know personally.
Who is this person? What was life like for them before? How has the epidemic changed their life? What happens to them? What conflict and crisis comes up for them because of the pandemic? How do they respond to it? What is the resolution? How does the experience change them as a person?
This post is part of a series I am doing that includes 30 prompts for 30 days of sheltering at home. You can read more about my reasoning and also find other prompts here. I would love to see what you come up with. Feel free to share here or to tag your work #shelterandwrite.
Find a headline or story that is good news. It might be the way that neighbors are helping each other. It might be the hope that our society comes out of the pandemic better in some ways. Maybe it’s a positive scientific discovery, or a very small silver lining in otherwise difficult times.
Write a story, essay, or poem that is based on this good news. Maybe you dive deep into the possible implications, or imagine that all neighbors were helping. What happens when this headline explodes into goodness, and changes the course of everything?
This post is part of a series I am doing that includes 30 prompts for 30 days of sheltering at home. You can read more about my reasoning and also find other prompts here. I would love to see what you come up with. Feel free to share here or to tag your work #shelterandwrite.
Being in the midst of a global pandemic makes us think different about the ways we communicate. Some people are feeling that life is fleeting, so they feel the need to get things off their chest before it is too late. Others are working on keeping people better informed, while still others are trying to maintain relationships at a distance.
Think about something that needs to be said. Write out this difficult conversation. This could be a conversation you’ve actually had, or one that you have been wanting to have. It could also be a fictional conversation between characters.
What needs to be said? How does the other person respond? Does this conversation resolve anything? Or exacerbate anything? What’s the context and the subtext of this conversation? What are the things that cannot be said?
This post is part of a series I am doing that includes 30 prompts for 30 days of sheltering at home. You can read more about my reasoning and also find other prompts here. I would love to see what you come up with. Feel free to share here or to tag your work #shelterandwrite.
Over the next few days, collect the words and phrases that stand out to you. There are a lot of phrases that have come into the recent zeitgeist: “new normal,” “flatten the curve,” and “social distance,” to name a few. You might also consider using quotes from news articles, survivors, politicians, or friends. What are people around you saying? What do you hear on the TV? What are the headlines, or the things you are reading on your feed?
Take some time to make note of the ones that really strike a chord with you. Create a piece based on these phrases. For fiction, you could start with one of those as your first line. Or your last. You could try to use them all in a poem, or reflect on the underlying meaning of each one in an essay. One great example is Jessica Salfia’s The First Line of Emails I’ve Received While Quarantining.
This post is part of a series I am doing that includes 30 prompts for 30 days of sheltering at home. You can read more about my reasoning and also find other prompts here. I would love to see what you come up with. Feel free to share here or to tag your work #shelterandwrite.
