Coming down from the high

After Christmas many people feel a let-down sensation; writers, all of whom are naturally sensitive seem to feel it more than others. For my part, I usually don't even try to write for the first 25 days of December because there are too many distractions. The baking, the cooking, the excitement, the fun, the parties all over for another year except for New Year's Eve, and that's still a week away. At that time, a creeping sadness may overtake you as it does me. Now is the time for you to grab four hours--no less--and call them your own. Make sure your family knows you are WORKING! and not to be disturbed unless flames are licking at the door to the room you've closed yourself into, or arterial blood is spurting from the body of someone near and dear to you. Then:

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  Pour yourself a large jug of water, add a squeeze or two of lemon juice (this will help purge your system of an overload of eggnog and other indulgences in comestibles you've imbibed/consumed during the past few weeks. Don't forget a glass. Take yourself off to the place where you feel you can write undisturbed, and begin. Do not return to your work in progress if you have one. Instead, look back at the Christmas just past, the Christmases that came before it. Dig deep within yourself for all the varied emotions those memories elicit. They may be happy, may be poignant, even sad, but whatever they are, write them down. Tell yourself--and this, for the time being, is just for yourself--how you feel about those memories, what emotions they evoke. Remember the sights, the sounds, the smells, the tastes, the way things felt to you--lights, carols, evergreens, the bite of icy air, the hiss of rain or the heat of the sun; draw upon recollections of the way snow sprays from your skis as you come to a stop, red-cheeked and elated from a perfect run down the hill, or the way sand feels between your toes as you walk on a tropical beach. Recall from that place within your soul or wherever your deepest emotions are stored, all the things Christmases have meant to you. Remember the people, the happiness, the moments of despair, the exhaustion, the relief, the successes and failures. Bring back to yourself the crinkle of wrapping paper, the shopping trips, the secreting of gifts where no one can find them before the day.
  
  Write these events and your recollection of them all down, preferably in first person. This is your private journal about your private feelings. No one else will ever see it. Don't worry about typos, spelling, sentence structure, anything like that. Turn off the editor on your shoulder and simply write, stream of consciousness.
  
  Then, moving into third person, write a scene using all those feelings you've dredged up, all those emotions, attributing them to characters out of your imagination. Read it over, but don't edit it. Then, write the sequel to that scene, showing how those characters responded to whatever went on in the first scene. Were they happy, melancholy, disappointed, despairing, joyful, even indifferent? Show why. Show who. Show when. Show where. Show what. And even show how. Perhaps most important, show how.
  
  When you have completed your four hours, save the work, put it away, don't even look at it until the dull days of late January and early February. Go on with your work in progress or start a new one. During the rest of the holiday season, take the kids skating, skiing, to the beach or wherever you want to take them and can get them to go. Make special, mental note of their actions, reactions, preferences and dislikes. Ask them how each event makes them feel and don't take "okay" or "I dunno" for an answer. If you have to, make a game of it. Have them tell you stories about the kind of Christmas they wished they'd had. If you don't have kids, borrow some if you can. If that's not possible, dig really, really deep into your own childhood and ask those questions of the child you were.
  
  THIS PHOTO IS OF A GROUP OF COUSINS, NOW MOSTLY GROWN UP. I'M SURE EACH ONE OF THESE YOUNG PEOPLE HAS SPECIAL MEMORIES OF THE TIME THEY SHARED, MEMORIES THEY WILL, IN TIME, DREDGE UP AND CHERISH, CUTTING THEIR OWN TREE IN THE WOODS, DECORATING IT THEMSELVES, AND BEING TOGETHER.
  
  
  

  
  
  
  
  When the time is right, whether your work in progress is finished or not, as I said, long about the end of January or early February, pull up those two scenes you wrote between Christmas and New Years. Reread them. Rewrite them, because in the intermim, whether you were conscious of it or not, probably more memories have worked their way to the surface, enabling you to flesh out those scenes, make those characters come alive, give them stronger personalities, more powerful needs and desires. Show how they feel about their Christmas to come, or Christmas just past. Involve yourself in their lives, their families, draw upon their emotions, emotions created out of your own and those to whom you have talked.
  
  Then, keep writing about them. Show them in action, show their dreams, their smiles, their tears, their hiding of their tears, their bravery in the face of heartbreak, tenacity in times of misfortune. Show, through them, the true spirit of Christmas.
  
  When you've finished, you'll see what you have, a book, a novella, a short story for an anthology, filled with all those emotions you just experienced, just wrote down, just dragged out of your own depths. You will have a piece of work that befits the season just past. You will also have a piece of work to send off to a publisher right away for consideration in the books and anthologies to be published next Christmas.
  
  What? You thought all those delightful Christmas stories available this year were written in October? Not a chance! They were written months before, while the memories and emotions of Christmas were alive and bright in the authors' minds, and your Christmas story will be just as alive and bright and topical because you wrote it now, while memories and feelings are fresh and new, not next October when they've faded.