Love Letters to Places

So this probably should be on my long neglected book blog, but I didn't want to deal with the difficulty of kick starting it yet again so I'm going to post this here.

Right now I've got this massive urge to work, not on the novels I'm supposed to be working on, but on an idea for a novel that takes place on a semi-mysterious island in the Puget Sound.  This isn't really a surprise, in fact it's a habit of mine.

I've realized that all of my novel settings are in essence love letters to places that mean something to me.  Even Rell which is set in a fantasy world is inspired by the high desert, river-centric landscape of southern Idaho.  One particular scene, even though it was a combination of places, was so specifically detailed that my cousin Jennie upon reading it said she felt like she recognized it as a place she had been. 

And it's not an accident that Capstone is set in the Washington D.C. area.  One of the most fun experiences I've had as a writer was planning an action sequence in the Metro station in Alexandria that I used everyday while researching at the National Archives a few years ago. 

One of the great, and yet I think sometimes lousy rules of writing is "Write what you know."  And I can't remember who exactly it was that wisely changed this rule to "Write what you love."  Not only does writing about these places make it easier to get the details right and also invest my stories with things that reflect my specific personality as a writer, but I also think it's a way for me to stay connected to these places even when I'm at my boring old desk reduced to looking at (literally at the moment) pictures of sunrise on Whidbey Island or a sketch of two people strolling hand in hand in front of the U.S. Capitol.

I also have this possibly crazy notion that anything I can do to up my emotional investment in the story I'm telling will eventually translate to those people who read my stories.