Setting the Scene
We had to travel this weekend to the wet west side of the state. We stayed with family Friday night and this was the view I soaked in while drinking my Saturday morning coffee:
Yeah, I don’t really want to talk about my jealousies right now. Let’s just stick with writing…kay?!
This was my coffee sipping view this morning:
There are similarities. Trees. Water. Shrubs.
Um…let’s look at a different view:
It’s nice to have a walking path just off the back porch, sure. The traffic noise is drowned out by the torrent of the irrigation canal. The cougars can only come up the canal in winter when the canal is dry.
But then there is:
Notice the lack of power lines. Also, there is no fence here to keep nasty boaters from randomly diverting their course like there is on my walking path (look carefully in the sagebrush, you'll see it)
Yet, the scraggly juniper and lava bed yard is my setting and the 30 shades of green and screeching bald eagle is someone else’s.
What I love about being a writer is the ability to snatch this peaceful riverfront home and plunk it into a story, thereby making it my setting after all. Perhaps I'll build this into a futuristic post-Armageddon storyline. Plunking it into a valley so well protected and hidden that the m.c. isn’t sure what to make of it when they stumble upon it, never having seen lush before. I know this time of year after a long, dry winter, I feel that way when I visit the west side of the Cascades. I’d be certain to incorporate the m.c.’s struggle with the overwhelming sensation they will be crushed under the weight of the humidity. Because I considered the possibility of suffocation from too-heavy of air myself a couple times yesterday.
Wherever I eventually use this setting, or bits and pieces of it, the writing will feel richer because of the first hand experience. So even if you are visiting for all reasons other than writing, soak up your surroundings. The smells, sensations, looks, sounds; even the ugly emotions, such as jealousy mixed with claustrophobia.
Thank you to our gracious hosts for putting us up in their beautiful home. I could never tire of your company or your suffocating view.