Pathetic Fallacy in November

I'm sitting in my writer's block (shed) gazing out at the downpour outside. The sky is like wet newsprint, running with grey. The rain that is currently drumming on my shed roof, reminding me of wet camping holidays as a child, expresses some of the gloom I feel at the approach of winter and the loss of daylight.

November is the perfect month for pathetic fallacy, a literary device where you attribute human emotions or characteristics to nature, or to inanimate objects, for  example the sullen river, the hostile facade of the building... You'll notice I've chosen negative examples in both cases, and this isn't purely coincidental, because pathetic fallacy is often used when human actions are so intense they are uncontainable and spill over into other things. Wuthering Heights is stuffed full of pathetic fallacy – the wild weather on the moors expressing the turbulent emotions with which Heathcliffe and Cathy are wracked. It can be a great way of giving your writing resonance, ensuring that the feelings of your characters reverberate and echo.

Because it's effective, pathetic fallacy can easily be come a default position and you need to be wary of that. You might consider writing a scene in which your heroine is having a major emotional crisis against a background of utter delight – radiant sunshine, the perfect vista, the ideal home – whatever floats your boat. My hunch is that this will enable you to explore feelings of alienation and isolation that are not available if you rely on pathetic fallacy all the time.

So, instead of the sodden garden with its great burden of water that I'm gazing out at, here's a field of young sunflowers newly opened up, turning their faces round to find light.