The Subject is Geography

When I was in elementary school, geography was almost as boring as math (though in fact, nothing really came close to math for being boring). 

Now, I wish I had the time to study geography every day. Working on a book set in San Francisco makes me wish I had a clearer idea of the terrain in North Beach. In fact, every story I write is rooted in geography--and I think every story ever written does, too, even when it's set entirely in someone's head.

Because every story has it's own surroundings. Miners in West Virginia, North Dakota or Texas are going to see very different land and encounter very different looking country than say, college students in Manhattan. We are all shaped by the places we live and see every day. 

My drive to work in January is going to look very different than your walk in Florida from your home to a nearby golf course, or from the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco to an apartment near the Coit Tower. 

We all know there's a vast difference between waking up in a slum or waking up in a penthouse on Park Avenue in New York City. Sitting by a fire sipping hot chocolate during a Minnesota winter is a whole lot different than trying to navigate through a storm in South Carolina. 

Every day, the places we live or visit or run away from find their way into us. Eventually, the places we grow up in or live in for most of our lives come to define us--not the other way around.

That's why the writer's job is to get really familiar with the geography of his or her story and to live there if at all possible. If not, you have to at least visit and walk around--though living somewhere gives you a much better vantage point.

Besides placing ourselves in a certain place, we also need familiarity with the time in which we're writing. The dust bowl period would have shaped people very differently than the people living in the same places where the dust bowl happened today. (Hopefully, climate change won't cause another dust bowl).

I think all of our physical surroundings are changing and that is going to change our stories too-- plus the stories we tell our children. In the last few years, we've seen more, hotter fires, more floods, tornados and earthquakes.

Geography still isn't done shaping us.

The thing we have to remember, though, is we can also be in charge of how the geography around us looks and works. To me, that means this moment is very precious in getting geography right. That means not politicizing the setting you live in and figuring out how to keep it alive so you can live well in it. That's why I think geography's essential (and the opposite of boring). Not only to my stories, but to us all.