Writers Unbound

The St. John’s River has inspired my pen many times–resulting in poems, articles and essays.

Thomas Wolfe, William Faulkner and Edith Wharton are three of my favorite classic authors who have become well-known standard bearers when it comes to writing place. Wharton with her renderings of society and the class system of her day, recreates a place that grows far beyond geography.

Today authors like Khaled Hosseini, Rick Bragg and Tim Dorsey grow characters and plot from the places where they have lived and the cultures that arise in those places.

Novelist Carol Goodman does this with her intriguing mysteries. She may not have lived everywhere she’s written about, but she weaves the mythology of places into her plots.

Florida is a great opportunity for writerly exploitation—the state where I live is politically conflicted, green year-round and quirky. Where else do cops dress up like Uncle Sam and pull speeding motorists?

The poetry collection I’m finishing now—“Notes from a Florida Village”—delves my own experience with Florida. Poems about the St. John’s River, a favorite restaurant nestled beneath great oaks and the small green lizards that line up like soldiers on my front walk all grew from observing and experiencing place.

If there isn’t a place you want to tackle directly in writing, you can always do what J. K. Rowling does—make one up while you’re sitting in a café.

The world has never been so accessible—even if you can’t go somewhere in person, the Internet offers so many options for learning about a culture or locale.

But in my opinion, starting at home is one of the best options for a writer to explore his or her craft. My backyard has probably inspired more poems than any exotic place I’ve traveled. All around us are common objects and familiar faces. I think reshaping the familiar into something uncommon is a great challenge, but it’s also a comfort.

I don’t necessarily think you always have to write what you know. After all, a different journey begins when you set pen to paper, one you perhaps didn’t envision when the crystallization for a piece of writing formed in your brain.

But in writing about the familiar, you may discover things you never knew about—true epiphanies—sitting right under your nose.

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