Sense of Place - Repost

The following article appeared on Avalon Authors while I revised Salsa Dancing with Pterodactyls.

October 23, 2011

A few years ago, one of the first comments I received on a manuscript I submitted to an agent was “I don’t know where this takes place.” I thought the descriptions were pretty clear. As far as I was concerned there is only one ‘City’ — San Francisco. The agent thought I was writing about London but she didn’t recognize my evocation.

Both cities are renown for fog and I had plenty of fog but mine was rolling over Twin Peaks. Hers was rolling up the Thames. I had trolley cars and BART. London has the Underground and double-decker buses. She wasn’t seeing any of the landmarks of her City.

I didn’t want to go down the route of actually naming the location – somehow that seemed a bit of a cheat, especially for this particular book. I wanted the physical and sensual details to do the job but they didn’t, at least not for this particular reader who had her own ideas about wharves, wet tram lines and exhaust fumes.

So, how do you evoke a sense of place? If you name the town or street, how do you ensure the person who reads those words has a real sense of where you want them to imagine themselves to be? Is a sense of location that important?

What Does a Writer Need? - Repost

This article was posted a few months before I moved from Wales, where I'd continued my writing and became a founding member and director of a women's co-operative publishing company, Honno.


September 23, 2011

I’m in the process of clearing 30 years of accumulated essentials. Besides all the accumulation related to family and friends, I have acquired books, paper, pens, inkjet cartridges, pencils, notebooks, files and their cabinets, envelopes to send manuscripts, envelopes for the return of manuscripts, floppy disks, external hard drives, thumb drives, cameras and their batteries, photographs on paper and on disks, computer and laptop, printers and scanners, desks, office chairs, briefcases and laptop bags as well as boxes and boxes of manuscripts. All of the above is related to my writing.

With just seven days remaining before I have to condense my life and work into two suitcases and a carry-on bag, what do I really need to keep working for the next three months while I wait for all of the above to arrive at my next hometown? 

My Essential Notebooks

I already know that I have a writing desk waiting for me, as well as a bookcase that will hold approximately 1/4^th of the books I am shipping. So, in order of priority, these are my essentials:

1. Current work with any associated notebooks all scanned to the laptop (see below).
2. Laptop with all typescripts and scanned material (see above) saved in at least three different places (including cloud storage) in case of loss.
3. My three favorite writing implements with all the ink cartridges I have in stock.

There is one other most critical something else, but I’m a bit short of that right now.

What are your essential ingredients for your work? Do you have any suggestions that will help me keep working while all around me goes astray? What should I leave behind?

All ideas grateful received.