Freeform
Been doing too much *thinking* about writing and not doing enough actual writing. There have been too many unwieldy novel-related thoughts ricocheting around the inside my head and never seeing the light of day, and too many momentary images and visions that have got lost by not being articulated or fleshed out. All of which means that the words never get written.
But this thread is designed to encourage me to just sit down and put words down in a line, bypassing my internal censor (aka ‘the perfectionist procrastinator’). Taking the dictionary for a walk, in the same way that you might take a pencil line for a walk in a sketchbook - no destination, just an habitual ramble.
Begin.
500 words a day, that’s all
From a drive home…noticing the days lengthening, but with a bank of very dark cloud creating an apocalyptic evening feel…
There’s enough residual light in the late dusk to give the station wagon in front a sense of depth and solidity, which offsets the flattening effect that his own car’s headlights are having on its cab and body. As the station wagon starts to lumber up the long drag of the last hill before the town, he closes on its taillights faster than he’d intended, and has to ease off the throttle.
As his car drops back jerkily, the broad back end of the station wagon recedes, the flat glare of his headlights loses intensity, and the dusk-laden landscape and sky assume a greater degree of prominence. Although the bulk of the station wagon still dominates his field of vision - and although his focus on it is understandably enhanced by the knowledge of the effect its weight and solidity would have on his own vehicle’s crumple zones - he blank uniformity of everything else is instantly rendered with greater contrast. 
To left and right the fields are darkening under the fading light, with streaks of unmelted snow lying in parallel along the ploughing lines, and away to the west a bank of rising mist is blurring the night into the last of the afterglow. Up ahead, though, beyond the brow of the hill and its crown of trees, a big bank of deep grey-blue cloud creates a dramatic backdrop to the station wagon’s passage up the hill. It’s the kind of stormy cloud that promises lashing rain or blinding snowfall - the kind of backdrop that film directors use to create a feeling of dread and apocalyptic threat, usually with accompanying lightning flashing inside the clouds, or whorls of paler cloud creating a maelstrom of light; aliens, gods or the end of the world dwell in such skies.
The drama of such skies, and the cinematic associations they bring with them in the subconscious, make him think about how banal his life is, and how interesting it would be if, when topping the hill, the shallow basin that you look down was transfigured in some way - by light, by weather, by flood, or fire; that’s what he likes so much about mist and snow - the way that the landscape is transformed, made more interesting, re-enchanted.

* * *