Resort to Resorts

From a lovely balcony on the third floor of a rather large hotel in Olhos De Agua, Portugal, I read a passage from my Lonely Planet guidebook that went something like this: if you are reading this while sitting on a balcony of a rather large hotel in Olhos De Agua, Portugal, you are an idiot because the aforementioned balcony cannot be lovely as it is made out of nothing but dirty concrete just like everything else that surrounds you.

"We are destined to lose dad!"

Not the best £20 I have ever spent on a book, I thought (if I really wanted to feel like an idiot, I would have simply reread “How Not to Write a Novel” which was the subject to my rant in Revision is Four Letter Word).  I pondered our decision to chase the sun down to the Algarve for a quiet few days.  The idea was spontaneous, the hotel was fantastic, and the price was reasonable.  All of a sudden, I felt like I should have opted for a trip with an emphasis on culture and discovery, rather than sun and bubbly™.

Wonder Whether Weather is Worth it?

Stock photo of two amazing
hockey players enjoying the weather.

It has been a cornerstone of my postings, both here and on Facebook.  Weather is all around us and more now than ever it is a part of just about every virtual and real-time conversation I have.  Mom will not talk to me unless we address the barometric pressure in London and L.A.  To further the infiltration of weather patterns in my life, I am now tracking the climate that I, myself, created in a fictional story.  During the revision process, I am making sure that my prose describes the “ablest weather that can be had” and that the conditions jive from chapter to chapter so as not to disrupt the reader with poor quality, amateur weather.  My goodness this weather business is tedious.  On the one hand I want my character to see his breath, but on the other I want him to sweat.  I guess I better get a jacket involved.  Regardless, I wonder, whether weather is really worth it? 

I didn't mention her once today.

Mark Twain didn't think so in The American Claimant.  It was whilst reading the passage where he promised to lay off the use of weather that I unceremoniously crowned him as my favorite author (so much so that I watched the entire lifetime special on him, which I think is 18 hours long).  I have included this passage below, and though I think the best writer in American history was on to something, the fact that he vowed not to use weather as a fictional tool in his book was actually a strong use of it after all (which he was no doubt aware).

Mark Twain’s strong opinion on the importance of weather is further exemplified in his most famous, yet unauthenticated quote, that “the coldest winter [he] ever saw was the summer [he] spent in San Francisco.”  He has also said that “if you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes.”  And finally, my favorite, he stated that “everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”

Touché.  In my humble opinion, Mark Twain, in his infinite and celestial wisdom sealed the deal for wannabe-writers and conversationalists around the globe, talk of weather is here to stay and there aint nobody gonna do a thing about it (I know, for some just reading that will be painful, but that is kind of the point).  Back to revision…