It's been a long, cold, lonely winter—and it ain't over yet.               

Winter in Minnesota is a time for reflection, thinking about your past; your future; and why in the hell you are living in this God-forsaken wasteland.  Sure…it's real fun for you snomobilers and skiers, but I stopped doing sports that I can die at some time ago.  Call me a chicken, but I can't see the pleasure in hearing your leg snap as you tumble down a hill at eighty miles an hour; biting through your tongue and finding religion in an instant.

It doesn't help that my wife is a freeze baby. 

When I was growing up, my Father never had the thermostat set above 62F, even in the dead of winter.  Now he has his set at his house around 52F.  You would have thought just the opposite; that as he grew older, he would jack that mother up to a scorching 65F or more, but not so.  I'm beginning to wonder if he thinks it will keep him alive longer, like storing hamburger in the freezer.  Every time I see him, I peer intently into his face, looking for signs of freezer burn.

Susan thinks that this behavior is quite insane.  She keeps jacking up the thermostat, and I keep turning it down—it's become quite the game between us.  That is until I booby-trapped the switch.  The only game going on then was me attempting to do the hundred yard dash as she came at me with a carving knife.  It's harder than you think to run and laugh at the same time—especially on an icy driveway.  She had the last laugh, of course, and I had a bruise on my ass for a week.

We have since compromised on a temperature we can both live with, although she still wraps herself in comforters and gives me dirty looks while we sit on the couch and watch television. 

Ain't love grand?

I tend to write a lot more during the winter months than in the summer, the reason being obvious: It's the difference between sitting outside on the deck in shorts and a T-shirt watching the sun go down listening to the ball game on the radio, or being outside and feeling like George Castanza from that classic Seinfeld episode, yelling, “But I just got out of the pool! I JUST GOT OUT OF THE POOL!”

Minnesota and a lot of the northern states went through a cold snap for a few weeks where the temperature highs were around zero or lower, and just starting your car became an exercise in futility. We didn't get the freakish snowfall like the northeast did, though, and we're sort of known for that. Thank the gods for small favors, because shoveling snow is akin to visiting a proctologist with a visible hand tremor, and he hasn't renewed the prescription on his coke-bottle-thick glasses since Jimmy Carter was president.

So inside sports are the name of the game, and if you can get over the feeling that the walls are moving in on you, (or get over the feeling that a guy with shaky fingers is coming to grab your ass) you might be able to accomplish something. While I love to create words on a page, writing, my friends, is work. If you look at all the new books and short stories that come out in any given month, you realize that coming up with an original idea is astronomically difficult. Sometimes, even the worst ideas get eaten up by the public just because they've never seen them before.

Case in point: Ron Popeil, multi-million dollar inventor, has come up with dozens, if not hundreds, of ideas for products. Who can forget the Popeil Pocket Fisherman , or, more recently, The Showtime Rotisserie. (Set it! And forget it!) Now, if truth were to be told, I owned one of those pocket fisherman do-dads. My family had just moved from St. Paul , MN , to a lake house outside a small town forty minutes north of the Twin Cities. My brother and I each received one of these highly sophisticated pieces of fishing equipment as sort of a housewarming gift from my grandfather. They lasted about a week, and we didn't catch any fish, but the thought was nice.

The particular product I'm speaking of was the GLH-9 Hair-In-A-Can Spray. You remember this, don't you? I remember sitting on the couch and watching with revulsion as Ron sprayed a bald guy's head with the stuff, thinking, “Who on earth would buy this?” I still remember laughing when the overspray ran down the guy's neck. The point is that this was a totally original idea, and as creepy as it sounds, it more than likely made Ronco a ton of money.

The task set before me, and all writers for that matter, is to come up with THE idea, the one that makes agents and publishers lounging in their offices sit right up and say, “Holy shit! What a kick-ass idea!” The trouble is that everything is subjective; what one agent/publisher likes, another may think is a pile of crap.

I have learned my lessons, and I've listened to other aspiring authors that are trying to get published, and I've come to a couple of conclusions:

1. Be true to your work . Don't write to anybody else's wants and opinions, unless they have a contract or a fat check with your name on it. Opinions are like assholes; everyone has one, and they all stink.

2. Don't give up. Numerous times I've heard authors say that they found their agent after they queried a hundred others. Same with publishers. Send that manuscript/short story out until you are blue in the face. If it's good, someone will take it.

3. Don't let the bastards get you down. It's easy to get discouraged, and I speak from personal experience. Getting down or depressed is easy when that rejection letter comes in the mail. Fighting through it is tough, but it can be done. You tell yourself that you can always get a job at the local cat food factory, but do you really want to?

Subjective opinions are a little skewed anyway. Susan and I were watching CSI the other night, looking for plot flaws, when a commercial appeared for a new movie that had just been released. The commercial used an aged technique to stir up excitement. It touted that it was “The number one movie in the country!” I snorted, and said, “Yeah, right. It looks incredibly stupid...how could that movie be number one?”

Susan said, “Maybe they were only rating their own movie.”

I started laughing my butt off. “Brilliant! That means that Tangents is the number one column in the world, because it's the only one on the list! My list!”

See what I mean about subjective?

Back in my office, I'm cursing the month of February; the month with the least amount of days but the longest to get through, and I'm thinking about spring. The real spring, with balmy temps, singing birds, and a happy sun, warming the earth. I'm also thinking about the six inches of soggy dog poop that covers the back yard and the thrills and chills of cleaning it up when it's actually warm enough to get out of the house.

I'm also trying to think of that idea...the one cosmic brainstorm that will not only make an agent swear, but also make the sometimes frustrating business of writing one big, warm sun; melting away the winter's gloom.

Today, the weather weenies have issued a winter storm watch, with the potential of getting a foot of snow over the weekend.

The bastards.