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Snow is falling at the rate of more than an inch an hour, and has been since about midnight. So we’ve already got a good ten inches with a few more hours of snow to come before it tapers off. My daughter is still sleeping, blissfully unaware of the snow day. My son got up at 6 a.m. to confirm his fervent hope. “Mom, I know why we have a snow day,” he confided. “We put spoons under our pillows and prayed really hard.”

I asked why a spoon would help, and he shrugged, sheepishly not wanting to examine the superstition too closely. “White spoons work the best, and we had white plastic ones.” Then he asked if we could have cinnamon rolls for breakfast and went back to his bedroom to play with Legos or read or play his hand-held video game.

I share these details because they evoke so many memories of my own childhood: snow days on which a pack of kids from my neighborhood dragged sleds nearly a mile to a hill on one of the neighboring farms, or took our ice skates out into the swamp in search of a patch without too many cattails sticking through and solid enough that you didn’t break through and get a soaker. Coming home, hands, feet and face prickly with cold, and trooping to the basement to take off all the wet snow gear. Burning my tongue on the hot chocolate every time.

Memories lie in details. And they can provide some of the richest territory for developing theme and character in fiction. Why did I burn my tongue every time? Was I greedy? Impatient? Or was it because my mom didn’t know a trick I later learned from my mother-in-law? My kids have never burned their tongues on hot chocolate because I watched her make it with about two-thirds hot milk, one third cold. So the chocolate melted, the sugar blended, and it was immediately drinkable. What could that difference in preparation methods indicate about a character?

In real life, the details may or may not mean something. My mom was awesome (still is, in fact) so there’s no “meaning” there. But in fiction, that simple detail might (in fact must) mean something, or else be stricken during revisions.

Details are great fodder for creativity, and I know several writers who collect their observations in journals. I used to journal but gave it up when I realized, in looking back, the percentage of my journals that amounted to whining. But I’ve interviewed poet Sarah Busse about her journaling, and will post her insights after Christmas.