Writing in the Snow
Nature and the simplicity of a child's creative process.
When I was around 7 or 8 years old, I wrote in the snow. It was winter, I was at my family’s home in upstate New York, and it was snowing. Cold, clear air, dead quiet, just the barren trees and a white crunchy blanket on the ground. Acting on a spontaneous impulse, I took my composition notebook and pen, put on my jacket, grabbed a kid-sized fold up chair, and headed out into the snow. I parked the chair behind our house, under my bedroom window, and I wrote. I don’t remember what I wrote — probably a story about dolphins or pilgrims sailing to the US on the Mayflower, knowing my interests at the time — but I will never forget the utter euphoria and freedom of writing in the snow. It felt like breaking all the rules, in the best way. My writing was the warmth I needed while my hands and butt got colder and colder. As long as I could write, I could withstand anything. Nature preparing me for life. I wrote for the trees, for the snow, for the deer, for myself.
I’ve come a long way from the chair in the snow — writing essays at my desk for school, typing on my computer in my dorm room bed throughout college, racing to finish the 10 pages of my screenplay that were due in class the next day. Scribbling notes to myself in my journals, documenting pieces of my life as evidence of what I did, how I lived, proof of who I was, for myself or my grandchildren to reference later, when I’m different, or gone. Adulthood has been hard on my creativity — common, I know, as kids are more hard-wired for play and are closer to “the veil” — that other realm in time and space where spirits and fairies live, and where stories are born. I have worked hard to maintain my connection with the great beyond — when I moved to LA I entered my “spiritual era”: reading “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle in my Venice Beach studio apartment and riding my bike to the crystal and spiritual bookstore on Abbott Kinney to buy a crystal to put in my bath that I would take after my yoga class. Creating those spaces to feel connected to myself, and to the unknown in the universe, was a necessity for me, especially as I pursued a career that was in direct contrast.
When I first moved to LA I felt as though I were living in extremes, as I would meditate every morning, take a scooter along the boardwalk and greet the ocean on my way to my car, and then would spend 12 to 14 hours at a corporate talent agency, answering calls and emails with robotic speed and precision, before getting in my car and listening to a spiritual podcast on the way home, eating a frozen tamale for dinner, hitting my weed pen and reading a few pages of a book before passing out.
Soon the talent agency became a TV studio, and then a writers room, and then another, and then another, and then another. And after the pandemic, there was no separation between work and life, no clarity on when there was time for such activities such as meditating or taking a bath or spending 20 minutes picking out a new crystal. The urgency around emails was consuming, never knowing when I would have to drop everything and answer. Picking up my phone the second my eyes opened in a panic that I had missed something in the 8 hours I had been asleep. Aside from my devoted journaling, I stopped writing. Working sucked me dry — I couldn’t squeeze out even a few drops of creative inspiration. I was a writer who was aspiring to seen as a writer and therefore be paid as a writer, and in the meantime was not being seen and was being paid barely enough to cover rent.
Truthfully, I didn’t understand how much of a business Hollywood would be. And how difficult it would be to combine business with creativity. The pressure to be perfect, to be paid, to be employed, to be valued, would cloud my head every time I sat down at my computer to write, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t shake it. The only times I managed to finish anything in the past 6 years have been done very quickly — a fully formed idea that I was able to shit out before my brain even knew what happened and tried to sabotage me with self-doubt. I felt like I ran a sprint against my will — forcing myself to use my creative mind in the pursuit of accomplishment.
I miss writing in the snow. The contrast of the powerful elements of nature and the limitless possibility of my imagination result in a creative symphony that takes me on a journey and also grounds me in the present moment. I am both inside and outside of myself, in my head and in my body simultaneously. This snowy afternoon was a long time ago now, and I don’t remember going outside to write in the snow again. But this small but revolutionary moment of childhood freedom has stuck with me, and whenever anyone asks about my creativity or creative process, I always think about sitting in that little chair underneath my bedroom window. Even now, with everywhere I have written, it is my favorite writing memory. The gold standard that I’m trying to get back to, the simplicity of it — snow, notebook, pen — it’s all I need to feel like a writer.
