Inspiration Monday: Rainy Days and Mondays

It is raining. Actually, there is a creepy storm system overhead that looks like something from a made-for-TV-movie with lots of worried folks glaring at the sky and making grave statements about their various and sundry plot points before the inevitable bad CGI storm comes and wreaks havoc with all their well laid plans. (But never their hair or makeup. Never.)

There's always something about a good thunderstorm that wakes up something electric inside of me, maybe my own little jar of lightning, and makes me want to sink my teeth into a good book, a fierce nap, or to write like a mad-person. Maybe it's my introversion. During a thunderstorm, I don't have to look for excuses to stay quiet and be at home. Nobody asks where I am or what I'm doing--I'm at home of course, being quiet. There's a thunderstorm, for crying out loud. I'm where I belong, where everyone belongs.

Having a storm going on somehow removes the variables of life. You can't really go for a jog, not unless you want the neighbors staring out their windows and clicking their tongues at you. "Not enough sense to come out of the rain," they'd say, with a solemn headshake. "Poor, sad thing." The same goes for dog walking, bike riding, speed walking, and any other rain-sense requiring activity. But reading and writing? They're famous rainy day/night activities. It makes for a good setting, too. After all, where would the canon of literature be without the good old stand-by, "It was a dark and stormy night"?

It is an ever-fertile scenario, having a set of characters run inside by a storm. Some of them are probably like me, they head straight for a blanket and a bookshelf. Some of them are frustrated joggers, dog-walkers, bike-riders, and speed-walkers. A ruined outdoor barbecue, some streaked mascara, a leaky roof, a creepy drawing room with a raven tapping at the chamber door--one of these scenarios has got to get the creative juices flowing, and what better to do when it is raining both inside and outside your head?

Give a little thought to what a dark and stormy night means to you. Is it an opportunity to slow down, or is it a prison sentence? Would a little thunder and lightning spruce up your story and add a little color? Maybe you just want to be a rebel and walk your dog anyway, literally or figuratively. Either way, take your very own midnight dreary and let it turn you inside out.