10 Weeks of Winter

Write what you know…

Anyone who has dabbled in writing has probably heard the common words of wisdom (often from wannabe or non-writers) “write what you know”. This little germ of insight, like most overused platitudes, carries a grain of truth in its banal and nearly meaningless foil packaging. If you take the aphorism literally you’ll find yourself down a rabbit hole of epistemology – “what is knowing”, “how does anyone ever really know anything”. At least, that’s where I end up. How do I know what it is that I know to write about it? What if you’re young and inexperienced, as I once was, trying to write something for which you’re aware you don’t have a complete perspective? I remember the first time I really faced this challenge. I was 12. Yes, I was 12 years old, and I had an idea for a story set in New England during the post-American Revolution period. I began to write it. The plot of the story was not a problem, but the facts of the time period, even the aesthetics, were unknown to me in sufficient detail to write about them. I became rapidly conscious of the fact that I knew nothing and the prospect of sufficiently informing myself was prohibitive. I abandoned the project.

I learned two very important lessons from that early attempt: 1) writing reveals what you don’t know or haven’t thought out thoroughly, and 2) knowledge and experience are important components of writing that may restrict one’s ability to directly pursue a writing project from their own mind alone or impel one to go get some knowledge and experience! Between writing a little and reading A LOT in my youth I repeatedly came to the conclusion that adventures and experiences don’t really take place in the mind, they take place in the world. I knew I needed a Bilbo Baggins approach to life before I would ever really be able to write something I liked: “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept.” Encountering the world, encountering challenge, hardship, beauty, wonder, information, and the awesome variety of people and cultures is for most (though I don’t think for all) a prerequisite to writing anything worth a grain of salt.

Life will hand you experiences just from living. The passage of time may be enough for some to deepen their perspective and acquire the kind of insight and wisdom that builds good writing. But it’s also possible to let life slip by without really engaging, learning, or noticing what’s happened. Endeavoring to do something in the world will help amplify opportunities for exposure and, frankly, the kind of humility required to develop wisdom and insight. It can be any endeavor, from construction to academics, from child rearing to starting a business. All that matters is an attempt to accomplish something. It doesn’t even have to be a “successful” attempt! Failure is perhaps a greater teacher than success, but both experiences are valuable. Between our hardware (or bodies and basic personality presets) and our software (our culture, social milieux, and experiences, or rather, our takeaways from experiences) living life and observing life will gift each of us with something a little distinct from everyone else. We all end up with a fingerprint of perspective that’s only and characteristically ours.

Find your voice…

Similarly to “write what you know” the novice or aspiring writer will often be told by either well-meaning individuals or intrusive know-it-alls that they need to “find their voice”. This recommendation is about equally useless to “write what you know”. What does that mean, “find your voice”? I have a voice. I’ve been using it since I was two thank you very much. Furthermore it implies the writer isn’t communicating effectively, which may be true, but the expression offers zero insight into where the communication has broken down. Perhaps it’s incoherent or inconsistent. Perhaps it lacks perspective. Perhaps it comes across as mimicry or derivative of other writers. Or perhaps the individual offering the “find your voice” suggestion simply doesn’t like what the writer has to say or the style they used in communicating it and are avoiding giving their genuine opinion that they just didn’t like the writing. Regardless, “find your voice” gives a writer no direction about where the problem is or how to go about addressing it.

I have spent considerable time puzzling out what it means to “find your voice”. It’s a question I have asked of myself and that others have asked of me – how do I find my voice, and what does that mean? There’s another little wrinkle in this puzzle which is that for fiction, and some nonfiction, writers multiple voices are used. There’s a narrative voice, character voices, and sometimes also the author or writer’s voice. Considering all of these levels of voices, how does a writer apply the concept of writing in their own voice?

Authenticity in writing…

I think there are a few components to addressing the problems presented by “write what you know” and “find your voice”. The key to both lies in authenticity, which, of course, contains its own related mysteries. However, basic skill in writing cannot be left unaddressed. Here are my recommendations for writing what you know and finding your voice:

1. Write what you feel and feel what you write. While you may not know everything, and you may not have experienced everything you’re writing about, you can have genuine emotional experiences as you write. Herein lies your authenticity. It can be an uncomfortable experience, but I promise it will shape your words and sentences into more resonant tones. What you think, i.e., your thoughts, is window dressing, but what you feel is real and true, and it will feel true to your readers as well.
2. Express yourself clearly. I wanted to title this item “use the craft perspicuously”, but I think it kind of undercuts the point. Use the rules of writing that you know. Break the rules of writing that you know. Study the craft of writing. Stephen King’s book On Writing is one of the best entries into studying and thinking about craft. Apply the craft skillfully, and when you deviate know that you are deviating. Another way to say it is write deliberately. Or don’t study the craft. I will take a radical position here, I don’t think you have to study craft to be a good writer, but you might need to start with some baseline talent. People who read a great deal or who have a gift for language may be able to pick up the nuances of craft without studying it directly. If you think you’re one of those people (and actually also if you’re not) I would recommend spending quality time reading writers who you think are particularly good so that their approaches get absorbed into your software – please note there is a risk of mimicry and derivative writing to this approach.
3. Develop style. Style comes from that unique fingerprint that is you. Live life, observe life, educate yourself, get experience, do research. Develop yourself and style will follow. Style can be enhanced by your preferences and proclivities. All artists have their influences, whether it’s nature or The Beatles or Shakespeare. Keenly notice what writing you love, and, most importantly, what you love about it. Is it in the word choice, sentence length or structure, detail or adornment, simplicity or minimalism? What is it that you like and why? Let this guide you as long as you let it guide you deliberately and not passively, otherwise you’ll recreate hack versions of someone else’s work. As for me, I adore the writing of James Harriot, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Frank Herbert, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Isaac Asimov. I like descriptive detail. I like vision. I like nuance. I like social commentary. I like breaking the fourth wall and use of second person voice. I like the balance of the darkness with the light. These are my favorite authors, and if I aspire to write like anyone it’s like one of them. There are so many other authors I like and admire and have learned from, but I don’t aspire to write like them, for example: Ernest Hemmingway, H.P. Lovecraft, Gustave Flaubert, and Daniel Defoe. Ultimately style is a matter of taste and preference. The caution here is that not everyone shares the same preferences. Once you adopt a style some people will love it and others will not at all. For all his fans, the people who don’t like Tolkien are vocal and claim he is a bad writer. They have misplaced their critique onto the quality of writing instead of on a distaste for the style of writing. It’s important to observe that people will judge something as bad if it is not their preference or to their taste – remember this if or when others critique your writing. Try to find readers who appreciate the style you’re aiming for and who can enhance its quality, and never forget that you cannot please everyone.

Authenticity versus honesty…

Discussing authenticity, truth, and knowledge dances around the concept of honesty without ever pointing to it directly. Some people and personalities will trip on this issue. A preference or desire for directness or the “brutal truth” can surface and deserves both attention and a good answer. Is authenticity the same as delivering blunt hard truth? Yes. It’s the same.

I could stop there. That’s enough said for those who demand an answer, but the other set of people and personalities will trip over my response to the question of whether or not there is a distinction between authenticity and honesty. In the expression “the brutal truth” a framing has been literally applied: “brutal”. Is the truth always brutal? Some think so. Others do not. Delivery matters. Delivery of the truth impacts the tone or emotional quality in which it is received. Delivery can also impact whether or not its received as honest or deceptive. It’s my observation that people who advocate for the “brutal truth” are particularly sensitive to deception and feel that when a truth is harsh it is coming to them unvarnished, raw, and real. For others, however, a brutal truth is received as dark, hostile, aggressive, unnecessarily provocative, or hurtful. The journalist seeks (or should seek) to avoid either softening or hardening the truth. Their goal is to present the unbiased facts. The lawyer in the courtroom seeks to present the facts in a way that walks the line between unbiased and emotional framing which persuades a jury toward receiving the facts as they present them as more correct. A father seeks to prepare his child for a difficult reality the child will have to confront in his presentation of the truth. A mother seeks to build emotional resiliency in her child when confronting difficult realities in her presentation of the truth. The truth itself is not malleable, but authenticity can be framed and the delivery harnessed to accomplish variable interpretations or understandings of the genuine, authentic truth.

Coming clean…

In this blog I have strived for authenticity. I think readers can pick up on whether the writer has intentions to genuinely communicate with them or not and usually prefer an honest account while also maintaining interest, intrigue, or straight up entertainment. My 10 Weeks of Winter project has a long(ish) term trajectory, and I have at times asked myself questions about which points on the graph to include in my posts. Life is messy, and like pursuing any goal there are ups and downs and general directional trends. Sharing only the ups paints an Instgram-esque picture of highlight reels, which may be motivating or upliftingly positive, but doesn’t provide the whole story and fails to acknowledge struggles, challenges, and failures. Alternatively, focusing on the dips alone is a gloomy read. I already have something of a dark constitution, and I suspect it comes through even when I try to be positive or directly factual. My bias is contrarianism even when I try to prevent it. It annoys me too. The last remaining approach is to only share the trends and tendencies – the average experience -, but the general direction of things is usually dull. Even if trends are moving in a positive direction, sustainable rates of change are rarely exciting. There’s no drama in slow progressive movement. Clearly an authentic accounting needs to blend synthesize these points on the graph, but there’s a final element to keep in mind: the audience. What would an audience like to read or know? What do I really want to share with them? Knowing that I have a slightly negative, contrarian bias and some antiquated desire for privacy, my goal is to share about 50% positive, interesting, artful, or exciting content (of course through my personal lens on these qualities), 30% facts, and 20% struggles, challenges, and failures. Hopefully in those allotments something resembling an interesting, or at least serviceable, version of an authentic telling will emerge.

I knew the Christmas and New Year period would present some challenges for sticking with my protocols, and as much as I tried to keep them going some have fallen off. Here’s where I’m at from best to worst performance:

• Writing A Daily Blog – You can see it for yourself. I have done this faithfully every day for 44 days so far.
• Reflection – Writing the blog has given me ample opportunity for reflection, and the following assessments in particular have contributed to understanding where I’m at and where I want to go from here.
• Vitamin D – Going strong! I have been consistent in supplementing vitamin D, which is probably the easiest change I made.
• Movement – I did not initiate anything new with movement, but have generally maintained my workout and stretching activities.
• Red Light Therapy – I lost the plot on using the red light therapy panel after traveling to visit my family on Christmas Eve. Prior to that I was good about using it in the morning and evening – not quite often enough to call it consistent but not so rarely that I’d call it spotty either. I have done okay with this one, and plan to get back to it as of today.
• Getting Outside – Similar to red light therapy, I have made a deliberate effort to get outside pretty much daily, even if for just a walk around the block, but circumstances here and there coupled with not having a consistently scheduled time of day for this activity has caused intermittent misses.
• Morning Light Viewing – I have hardly done this at the schedule time in the morning. I’ve usually put it off and slotted it into the getting outside activity, giving myself the allowance that I’m getting light, but its effect related to time of day (supposed to be early dawn light) cannot be having an impact because I’ve done it at the schedule time so infrequently.
• Breathing Exercises – When I completed breathing exercises regularly it was in time with using the red light therapy panel, which means I haven’t done them for about two weeks, and I believe I fell off doing them regularly before then. The morning exercises helped me warm up and served as a good pre-workout activity, but the evening breathing exercises were observably even better. I was doing abdominal breathing in the evening, and it was noticeably helping me to get to sleep and sleep well. After a little while I started developing some sensitivities from the breathing exercises which were a challenging to feel, and I think that contributed to letting the exercises slide. I think I will try to pick up this activity again, but I may change when I do them and which ones I use.
• Cleaning and Clearing – Cleaning and clearing was always intended for the new year. I’ve written several posts that involve cleaning and clearing: decorations, project season, preparation, and big clean. I have done all of those projects and processes in part, but I have not come close to meeting my full ambitions. Cleaning and clearing is forming into a longer term winter project for me. I wish to do it more than I have, but ultimately I have spent too much time elsewhere. This item requires reflection and either a priority shift or a de-prioritization.
• Sauna – I got as far as buying a pass to a local rec center to use the sauna, but I haven’t acted on it yet! Sauna is high priority for January!
• Rest – I need to do better at rest. I am falling into the winter trap that has deteriorated my experience of the season in the past where I stay up too late (past midnight) consistently. Part of it has to do with not completing my blog posts early enough in the day and staying up to write them (and with poorer output). Part of it is languishing in the screen light. I have purchased blue blocker glasses and am using them, especially when writing, but I need to revaluate my behavior relative to screens, scheduling/getting things done on time, and going to bed on time. I have allowed a couple days of sleeping in over the new year just to catch up on a rest, and occasional naps have been good too, but I won’t be able to maintain late bedtimes come Monday.

So far I have been enjoying this winter more than recent winters past. Writing the blog and reveling in the delights of winter has been a pleasurable experience for me and has reminded me of the little things I love about the season. I also think vitamin D supplementation and getting outside for 15 minutes or more once a day to just walk and be in the light, even if it is gray and dismal, has had significant benefits on my mood. I also think the red light therapy was providing some benefits, but maybe more toward general health than having significant seasonally related impacts. My biggest remaining obstacles to address are time management and screentime. These are persistent challenges for me, which suggests that I’m not being realistic or honest with myself about aspects of these challenges. I’m excited to finally bring sauna into 2026 winter adventures, and I’m already feeling the benefits of extensive cleaning. With some rest and re-engagement I’m hoping to adapt the project for a final three weeks of the long and glorious dark of winter.