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Finding Writing Ideas In Your Holiday Festivities Christina Sexton Wilcox How The Holiday Rush & Post-Holiday Slump Can Keep You Writing All Year Long It's ironic. The same season that generates the most fuel for our creative fires is the same one that leaves us the least amount of time to take advantage of all this inspiration. Whether our holiday is Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwaanza, or something else, many of us are in total sensory overload for the entire month of December (at least). Inspiration comes in through all five of our senses. Whether it's the smell of cookies and holiday dinner in the oven, the sound of logs crackling in the fireplace and children playing in the snow, the sight of holiday decorations around the house, the feel of sticky pine cones in our hands, there's no shortage of opportunities to translate sensory perceptions into words. And add to all that the stories that inevitably get shared at family gatherings. It's a pity we can't kick everyone out for several days so that we can write it all down.

Fortunately, the post-holiday lull — known as the month of January — provides 31 days for doing just that. What follows are ideas for capturing the sights and sounds and smells of the holiday season that just wrapped up — and preparing for the next one. And if you mine your holidays really well, you'll find dozens of article ideas that you can pitch to publications. Write About Food It's always better to get your cravings down on paper than down your pipes — a motto that's too late for Holiday Season 2002 but that should be remembered for Holiday Season 2003. Liven up your stories with interspersed details of smells and textures of your (characters') favorite foods. Write a scene where interesting things happen to your protagonist when he smells gingerbread baking. If this makes your cravings more intense, then do the opposite: Write about foods you love to eat, but add a bad outcome. Your favorite eggnog was left in the sun, turned green and chunky, but you drank it anyway. Give details of the eggnog's lumpy journey through your digestive system. What a great way to kill off that pesky antagonist. And if that doesn't cure your craving, nothing will. Write about foods you hate, how you think fruitcake is the most vile of foods, or how your cousin Benny once stuck a candy cane up his nose and now you can't even look at one without seeing it coming out of his mouth. Rather than just capturing how apple pie smells when it's baking, write about how it changes after a couple of days in the refrigerator. Or how the spices in pumpkin pie overtake the taste of the pumpkin when the pie is three or four days old. The sense of smell and taste are often our strongest memory-releasers. Think back to your childhood Christmas or Hanukkah when you came in from the snowy afternoon to smell cider or mulled wine brewing. How about the way a basting turkey makes the whole house smell like love? This is a wonderful time for memories and memoir writing. You might be surprised at how much you remember by focusing on the feasts while evoking all your senses. Send In Your Favorite Recipes This is a great time to break out those time-tested recipes. Don't limit yourself, cooking magazines aren't the only ones who accept recipes. Local newspapers often run holiday specials and pay for recipes. My local paper even wanted a related family anecdote to go along with a recipe! Home and garden and women's magazines often feature some kind of food section. Pick your favorites and send for guidelines so that you can submit your ideas for the next holiday. Maybe your Aunt Ruth's mincemeat pie could earn you some holiday cash. Also, don't limit yourself to recipes for holiday entertaining. Look at the recipes and tricks that you, your mother, your aunt, your neighbor use in order to clean out leftover turkey or roast beef. Nearly any publication that runs holiday recipes is also looking for creative ways to use up the leftovers. Ditto if you have recipes that cater to special dietary needs, such as diabetes, high cholesterol, low-fat, heart-healthy, and food allergies. There are dozens of special interest magazines and newsletters for people with these health concerns, and even newspapers and general-interest women's magazines will consider running these kinds of topics. When You Do Bake Again, Make Time To Write If the December wind stirs in you a primal need to break out the flour, sugar, and eggs, go ahead and indulge yourself in the fine art of baking. Notice how your hands feel when kneading dough, how your kitchen smells when the cinnamon and nutmeg bake, or how just a small amount of walnuts can make your mouth itchy. Note all the emotions you feel when creating something from scratch. Let your mind wander. Downtime is when your best ideas flow. Many of these sensory images can become sensory details that enrich your poetry, short stories, or novels. If you must bake, you must give it all away. But when you give it away, make it a grand affair. Wrap up your goodies in festive ribbons, take a day to hand deliver them and socialize with family and friends. This is a great time to extract holiday stories from an aging aunt or neighbor. Write a poem on a note card and attach it with the goodies, even if you deliver in person. Make your poems specific to the food you've baked or the person you are giving it to, or both. Keep the writing channels open at all times. Take A Walk When taking a break from your writing, pass up the kitchen and go straight for the porch. Soak in the seasonal smells while gathering ideas for your prose. What is the major difference in the air from season to season? The smell, the temperature, the color? What are the differences in your garden? Have the bulbs died back to reveal winter pansies? Is everything greener with the rains or going dormant with the frost? Walk around your block. Who decorates their homes or yards for holidays throughout the year (such as Easter, Fourth of July, Halloween, etc.)? Which ones are tasteful, which ones gaudy? Do people you pass seem nicer or more hurried? Can you see their breath yet? Will you ever? Do you dream of warmer or colder climate? If setting is an essential element in your stories, cull from your own sense of season. Note how specific spots along your walking route change throughout the year; these details can enrich a piece of writing later on. If you find yourself overloaded with ideas and have a hard time remembering them all when you get back to your desk, carry a small tape recorder with you. You might even carry a camera and snap pictures if you want to remember a lot of details from a scene; then archive the pictures somewhere — in a notebook or journal or as digital images on your computer's hard drive — and write something about each one. Why did you take the picture? Why was one scene along your route more in need of photographing than another? If you could change anything in the photographed scene, what would it be? Capture Your Memories Sift through your just-developed photographs from the holiday parties and family gatherings and journal a few paragraphs for each one. Use these as springboards to capture other memories to the best of your recollection. How do things look in hindsight? What was it like to take over preparations for the family holiday dinner from your mother (who did it for the last 30 years)? If you're newly remarried and this was the first holiday that your own children spent with their new step-siblings, how did things go? If you're recently separated or divorced, how was New Year's Eve different this year (and don't go for the obvious things)? If this was the first year that your child really "got" the concept of Santa and opening presents, how did that change Christmas morning for you and your spouse? All of this is fodder for everything from personal essays to memoirs to short stories to scenes in a novel or a play. With hindsight and insight, you might even find some ideas for interview-based articles for magazines and newspapers. Interpersonal relationships provide a lot of fodder for "coping articles." Parents need advice on getting their children through their first holiday after a divorce. Newlyweds are faced with the "in-law shuffle," the sometimes nightmarish logistics of deciding which set of parents gets them Christmas Eve and which gets them for Christmas Day. New parents struggle with carting an infant from house to house, negotiating everything from the comedic (packing enough baby supplies for the day without requiring a suitcase) to the angst-ridden (worrying about what sicknesses they might be exposing them to). Personal experience is a major key, and asset, for these types of articles. Focus On The Summer Not only do you need to be planning queries for the next holiday season, you also need to focus on the seasons that come before. Magazines generally have a six-month lead-time. Keep your mind on June and what articles your favorite magazines might need for their summer issues. Think about summer article ideas: the best local summer programs for kids, travel articles on pet-friendly resorts, or a glamour article on the best self-tanning lotions. Keeping short shorts and bikinis in mind will help keep your fingers from dipping into the fudge bowl.

Snacking Tips For Writers Let's be honest — holiday munching doesn't exactly end with the holidays. Depending on what you do for Christmas and New Year's Eve, there's pie and cookies, chips and dips, cheese and crackers, beer and wine hanging around the house well into the first week of January. And let's not forget what came in as gifts from well-meaning friends and family: assorted candies, cookies, chocolates, cheese trays, bread and scone mixes, sets of dessert sauces, bags of gourmet coffees (which always seem to make cookies given as gifts all the more irresistible), and on and on. If we're not careful, we end up eating in holiday mode right up until Easter — particularly since so many of these gift goodies are perfect for eating while we're sitting at the computer writing. So before you take the cellophane off that box of Belgian chocolates that your Aunt Trina sent you check out the following tips. And if you discover some things that work for you (alternative snacks, ways to actually get yourself to drink enough water every day), nearly all of them can be pitched as an article idea or short tip somewhere. Keep The Water Flowing Although it may be getting colder, water is still your best friend. Just because you're not sweating or feel thirsty, you still need at least 64 ounces a day. It will not only help you feel full, but will keep your metabolism revving. If you can't bring yourself to drink that much water, look to alternatives that offer more flavor, same benefits, and few to no calories: flavored water, sparkling water, or seltzer, or herbal tea, or water spiked with a little bit of fruit juice. Don't Snack While You Work A bowl full of chocolate candy can disappear fast if you don't pay attention. When you have a snack, walk away from your workstation and sit in an uncomfortable chair. Getting away from your desk allows you to keep eating and working in different "compartments" in your brain. By doing so, your brain doesn't automatically think that it's snack time when you sit down at your computer. Focus on the act of chewing and tasting. Engage all your senses and chew slowly. By the time you're done with your snack, you'll feel more satisfied and the need to return to a more comfortable chair will bring you back to the keyboard happily. Go For Fresh Foods In some regions, having a juicy nectarine in December is impossible. Take advantage of the upcoming summer produce season and stock up on your favorites. Cut your fruits into small pieces and freeze them for later. Although many fruits turn brown when frozen, the flavor is sealed in. It's a joy to defrost a bowl of August peaches in January, or use the pieces of frozen cantaloupe in a yogurt smoothie. Fruit not only provides much-needed nutrients, but satisfies sugar cravings as well. (And if you do find a way to freeze fruits without having them turn brown, nearly every cooking magazine out there is willing to pay to publish your secret.) Create A Motivation I took one of my favorite (and as of today, still-too-small) dresses and hung it up in my office for motivation. This not-so-subtle reminder helps to me to remember my long-term objective: to change my holiday munch-months from a feeding frenzy into a beautiful, festive season full of great prose! Turn Your Gifts Into Writing Ideas For The Next Holiday Season We might as well be honest with ourselves. Eventually, we're going to break into that canister of Hershey Kisses or have a disagreement with our boss that sends us home to open that collection of Walker's shortbread cookies and snarf them down in front of the TV. If we're really kind to ourselves, we'll simply take the stuff to the office and...ahem..."spread the wealth." If we're creative, we'll suggest an "exchange day" at the office, a Friday afternoon a few weeks after the holidays when everyone brings in the snacks they received and shares them — getting them out of the house once and for all. But when you do so, make note of what you see in this exchange, what you liked best, what others liked best, what the most popular food items were, how people described what they did and didn't like. You'll undoubtedly find several "buyer's guide" ideas that you can pitch to anyone from a niche magazine to your community newspaper for Christmas 2003.