A Real Setting, an Imaginary Problem

I think the biggest challenge with the book I’m working on now has been location. Location, location, location.

My last two series, Stories From Hartford and Coffee and Donuts, were set in fictional towns. I wanted to be able to imagine the places any way I liked. I even went so far as to have a character in one of the books refuse to name her previous hometown because I didn’t want to suggest proximity to any real place.

For this next book, I decided to plant my characters in northern Ohio near where I grew up. Then I began to question that decision. How specific should I be? Did I want them to live in a real town? On a real street? Should they visit stores or parks that really exist? Did I want to let nostalgia paint the area as it was when it was my home? Or did I want the changes I’ve seen in more recent visits to make the setting up-to-date? If I used a real location, would that invite the assumption that some elements were inspired by real people or events as well? Was I opening myself up to criticism if I took any creative license or had a memory lapse?

These were some of the questions I had before I even started writing the book. Once I dove into the first draft, the questions began to fade away. Working in real places could have sounded like random name-dropping because the location didn’t come up all that much. When one character mentioned that the weather was nice enough to take the kids outside to play, no one said, “That’s right. The weather here in Ohio can be a bit unpredictable so we’re lucky to have this warm day in April.” No one expounded on the fact that the yard was good and flat because of the glaciers either. And when that same character came home from work, he never said, “Guess what? I drove past Lake Erie again today.”

My characters aren’t visiting landmarks on a regular basis. Or at all. They aren’t tourists. They don’t spend any time listing the positive and negative qualities of where they live. No one sits at a window gazing out while describing all the beautiful cornfields or Sears Catalog homes. They simply live there.

I got what I wanted in the end, which was to remember a familiar setting while I wrote. Location turned out to be a challenge only because I’m kind of neurotic. Fortunately, that was familiar, too.