VZ could possibly take place in a town I know however since the airport is a character in the book I think that might be a bit dangerous. I think it might be better to make it more of a composite but I don't know.
The other book that still has no title could take place here in San Jose. That might not be a bad thing. I have to set it in at least a region I know because the topic matter is very regional...so it needs to be Bay Area but I could also make up a town that is based on this area.
A friend told me that her writer's group had discussed the idea of whether or not to use real places and their general consensus was if you were going to write about a small town, it's best to make up the name. If a large city, it's best to use a real one with landmarks people can identify with.
I think there are advantages to both. I'm just not sure what the right answer is for these two stories.
How do you make the decision about whether or not to use real places in your story?
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kellyrfineman for pointing out that dotificus had just last week posted about this very thing. There's some good conversations about setting over here. thanks, Kelly.dotificus posted some notes about a recent conference she attended and one of the comments was that we should ground our characters in a specific place. I've been writing picture books for quite a while and while place is important, it is different than with a novel. With the current WIP I am thinking about place a lot. (Okay, so maybe I should have been thinking about it more on the last novel too but that was more of an internal journey.) Years ago, many, many years ago, I wrote a YA novel where place really mattered. I set it in a ficitional town near a real town that I knew well. I found that once I did that, landmarks and names wove their way into the story naturally and events unfolded correctly (and sometimes surprisingly) all because of where I set the story.
Since I'm in the thinking hard about a lot of things part of this new book I knew that the setting was important for me to know before I could really dig in and write very far. I had the title (can't start to write without one), had the MC name (also can't start to write without one), and I was thinking about place and the other characters in the book but nothing felt grounded in a location that seemed right for the story. Until yesterday. When Frankie ate a piece of chocolate and I knew where he got it, how it he got, and where his story would take place. I got that wonderful, hard-to-describe but physical feeling when you know something is right. From that piece of chocolate I learned where Frankie lived. I knew one of his hiding places. I knew two people who befriended him. And I learned what really happened to his little sister. There's a lot still to learn and that will come in the writing of the story, but having this place, this perfect place for the story to take place, puts it all into prespective.
cynthialord mentioned that she likes to visit the places where she sets her book and gather things to take back and remind her of that place while she is writing. I think that's a good plan for hopefully this weekend. I need to explore the area a bit more and make sure I understand how a couple of things work. Take some pictures. And of course, eat some chocolate.
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Things to Do
Quotes
"We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason why they write so little." Anne Lamott
"Love the writing, love the writing, love the writing...the rest will follow."Jane Yolen
"The whole thing is, you’ve got to make them care about somebody." Frank Capra
"As writers, we must be willing to feel our sadness, our anger, our terror, so we can reach in and find our sweet vulnerability that is just sitting there waiting for us to come back home." Nancy Slonim Aronie
"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours!" Richard Bach
"Yet somehow, we write; and most of the time, we like what we write. The dark place seems less dark when we get there. It was only the journey that was fearful." Susan Shaughnessy
"You must want to enough. Enough to take all the rejections, enough to pay the price of disappointment and discouragement while you are learning. Like any other artist you must learn your craft -- then you can add all the genius you like." Phyllis A. Whitney
"Writers write about what obsesses them. You draw those cards. I lost my mother when I was 14. My daughter died at the age of 6. I lost my faith as a Catholic. When I'm writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is." Anne Rice
"I write in terror. I have to talk myself into bravery with every sentence, sometimes every syllable." Cynthia Ozick
"There have been societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories." Ursula K. LeGuin
"Your first job is to get your own story straight." Natalie Goldberg
"Only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking." Naomi Wolf
"Few children learn to read books by themselves. Someone has to lure them into the wonderful world of the written word; someone has to show them the way." Orville Prescott
"A writer either speaks to adults and bores kids, or speaks to kids and upsets adults." Ursula K. LeGuin
"I'd always thought you had to be a special person to write. And then I realized you just have to start." Abigail Thomas
"You will recognize your own path when you come upon it, because you will suddenly have all the energy and imagination you will ever need." Jerry Gillies
"But they’re not telling the truth if they don’t teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer." Doris Lessing
"A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote."Yevgeny Yentushenko
"And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the
greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't
believe in magic will never find it." Roald Dahl
"I compose sometimes with a pen and notebook, sometimes on the computer; it makes no difference. If all I had was a chisel and a rock I would write on the rock." Ursula Le Guin
"If you want to write from a place of emotional integrity, it is important to learn everything you can about all kinds of emotions, including those that exist in you, that you wish didn't." Elizabeth Berg
"And this is the way a novel gets written, in ignorance, fear, sorrow, madness, and a kind of psychotic happiness as an incubator for the wonders being born." Jack Kerouac
"Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing. They are the ones who discover what is most important and strangest and most pleasurable in themselves, and keep believing in the value of their work, despite the difficulties." Bonnie Friedman
Who am I?I was born on the Cancer/Leo cusp and share a birthday with Ernest Hemingway and Robin Williams. The similarities don't stop there as I can go from depressed to ecstatic without ever passing go. I feel scared most of the time though my friends call me brave and I find it easier to believe in my friends than to believe in my own abilities to make what I want out of my life.
Who am I? A wife, a mother, a daughter, and even, gulp, a grandmother.
Who am I? A writer who never gets tired of playing with words, even when the words are hard to find. A writer of books for children and articles for grown-ups and many things in-between.
Who am I? A motivational speaker, writing instructor, workshop leader and full-time follower of dreams.
Who am I? Read and find out.
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