The Land of Fog and Fog                 

Living in Northern California, we don’t have real weatherlike a lot of other places. It doesn’t snow, doesn’t rain much and it doesn’tget overly hot in the summer. What we do have is fog. Lots of gray, damp,sun-stifling  fog. Year round.Summer mornings are the worst. You inevitably wake up to a faceful of graywhich makes you want to climb back into bed and just forget about it. If you’reever coming to San Francisco in the summer time bring jackets. I’m serious.Most of the tourists from normal climates foolishly think summer equals warmhere and stand out on Fisherman’s Wharf awash in goosebumps and those littlepurple blotches you get on your legs when you’re cold. The upside is that theyalways go home with a snazzy new San Francisco sweatshirt.

I’d like to say fog is inspiring. That it makes a cocoonaround me and that I bundle up in my favorite writing chair and am moreproductive than James Patterson on endless espresso shots. I’d like to saythat, but it would be a lie. Day after day of fog is nothing but depressing. Idon’t do my best work when I’m depressed. And when the sun finally does comeout, we all rush out like marooned sailors after a supply boat so writing isnot so great when the weather is nice either. So how does the weather affect mywriting? It doesn’t.

I do most of my writing in places and at times when theweather simply doesn’t matter. I wrote most of Dirty Little Secrets on a benchat the big, cavernous gym where my son was taking circus classes. Three hourstwice a week with nothing to do but sit with my laptop and write. Oh sure,sometimes there would be rain bouncing off the metal roof, but that’s about asmuch weather as I ever noticed. For my WIP, with the launch of DLS and mywriting day-job it is getting harder and harder to write while the sun is out(even when it’s gray, we know it’s up there somewhere), so I tend to write lateat night. Once everyone else is in bed, the phone has stopped ringing andpeople no longer want me to make them food or find their lost library book I canfinally get some quality work done. The hours between 11pm and 1am seemespecially sweet.

I know some people like to write when it’s storming andother people get inspired by bright sunshine. Apparently, my favorite weatheris whatever is going on in the middle of the night.