Snowball Fight!

I’ve been fleshing out my book. Every time I sit down to write I get a little bit more of it figured out. Which is good—if slow and torturous. But this is the problem with having a “fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants” approach to writing.

I also liken it to rolling a snowball uphill.

At first it doesn’t matter that you’re going up the hill. The ball is light and fluffy, the white snow dazzles your eyes as the sun hits it and all is good with the world. The snowball grows a little bit and you smile, thinking what great exercise you’re getting.

But then, as the snowball continues to balloon, it gets heavier and you start to puff just a little bit. You can see your breath coming out in longer gasps of steamy air and the sun isn’t so much dazzling as it is a glare and you wish you’d brought a pair of sunglasses.

After a few more steps, the snowball is up to your waist and your arms are burning as you try to keep it from rolling back down and crumbling away to nothing when it bounces off a tree trunk. You have to stop and turn around, anchoring it in place with your back, your heels digging into the ground, snow falling into your boots so that your feet feel like two matching blocks of ice.

But then, after a few deep breaths, you look around and notice that the sun is still shining and its rays are warm on your face. You’ve come quite a long way up that hill, the top isn’t so far away anymore, and your snowball is nice and round and pretty. Pushing it the rest of the way is still a chore and a half and you might have to stop again more than once, but finally—FINALLY—you reach the top of the hill. You can look down at the distance you traveled and sigh happily that it’s over. Here is your snowball!

Now what do you do with it?

Of course, you send it careening back down the hill and hope it knocks everyone in its path right on their ass...in a good, awestruck by your brilliance kind of way.