In which I contemplate snow and slush

Weather is frightful outside, lots of wet heavy snow. Just perfect for building a snowman. So, it's perfect snowman snow. Sculpting snow. Sometimes when I'm writing, words and phrases are like that--easy to shape, stick together in pleasant ways, build a good structure. Other attempts at writing are like the other kinds of snowflakes--they are all ok separately, but they don't do much other than lie there. You can't get them to interact. The words look pretty,and they sound pretty, but you can't really get them to cooperate to form anything useful. They just slide through your fingers and float off in their own direction.

So, how can I get words to be like the sticky snow most writing sessions? I keep thinking how hard it is to come up with a plot. My characters just don't want to do anything interesting. They just sit there and say stupid stuff. Is it that I haven't defined the characters well enough? Is it that I don't have a good plot? What is a good plot anyway? I mean, I have beginning, middles, and ends, but nothing ever seems to happen or tie them together. They are often kind of like the powdery snow...

I don't know. Maybe it doesn't really matter. Maybe I should just write what comes, and if it's power, and doesn't stick together, one can always warm things up just slightly, and make it wet and slushy and sticky. It's not as much fun, it's not elegant, but it can work. Or so I keep trying to convince myself.

And how do you get those brilliant flashes of imagination? I don't know. I guess I just keep trying. Write a bunch of words and sort out the chafe from the grain... Maybe I should do different creative stuff and see if that unleashes something. Kind of get at it from a different angle. Maybe that would do something.