
Today, I’m off to Bristolcon for the first time in a couple of years and am looking forward to my panels, including one I’m moderating that features, among others, bestselling author Jasper Fforde.
While researching Jasper for his introduction, I stumbled on this from the Straits Times:
British author Jasper Fforde has coined a new portmanteau – “scribernation“.
A mash-up of scribe and hibernation, it describes bundling up against the elements during winter, ignoring the world and sitting down to write.
“I regard winter as a time to write,” says the best-selling author of the Thursday Next series, in which the eponymous heroine is a literary detective who jumps into books to fix errors and pursue criminals.

I love scribernation. And it’s true. There’s something about winter that makes you want to batten down the hatches and get creating.
In fact, thinking about it, I do it all the time. Even in the middle of summer, when it’s brilliant sunshine outside, I often pull the curtains and put on an ambient soundtrack of a rainstorm, complete with thunder. The thrum of the rain and the rolling thunder focuses on the words in front of me, whatever the real weather outside.
Add a pair of noise-cancelling headphones and the rainstorm also helps drown out sounds of my kids during school holidays too!
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