writing the where of it

What is it about place?

I’ve always been fascinated by landscape.  Urban, rural – it doesn’t matter.  Place figures in a big way in much of what I choose to read, and in the novels and stories and articles I write.

Some writers can nail a place dead-on.  How do they do it?  Can science inform our understanding of place and make us more astute observers and able writers?  Can desire?

Personal memory, cultural memory, sensory apprehension, the input of science and the imagination – literature draws on all these ways of knowing.  The way I see it, story says.  The way I sense it, feel it to be, remember it being, project it to become. Place permeates the most effective writing, altering its fundamental structure and lending a kind of authority to that voice.

I’ve been thinking and writing on this for some time, now.  Turns out I’m not alone.  So I picture this blog partly as a kind of virtual living room, a meeting place for readers and writers who care about place.  The aim is to stimulate thought, invite discussion, share links, build community.  And because creative vision and expression is as vital as analysis, the seedbank is there to fire up your imagination.

Here’s the setup:  every weekday you’ll find something new on the home page.  Monday and Thursday it’ll be a new post on some topic related to place.  Some days it’ll be a book review, or a movie review, or a comment on music or art.  Some days it will explore a particular place or mull over a writing issue.  Some posts will riff on a word or a phrase from science, or architecture, or some other fertile field for thought.  Some will be written by me, others by guest writers.

And on the other days?  Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday you’ll find a “seed”, a quote or an image or a writing exercise or a list or an evocative word you can use to sprout your own live creation.  If you want more, check out the separate “seedbank” page; every week I’ll shake it up with five seeds from past posts.

And whether you’re primarily a reader, a writer, or both; whether you’re mad about a particular place or are interested in the idea of place in general, I want to hear from you.  Urban or rural?  Weigh in.  Fiction or non?  England or France?  Cats, dogs, chickens, children?  Whatever your leanings and wherever you go, bring the pith of it back here.  Comment on the posts.  Submit to the seedbank, and I’ll credit you if I post yours.  Shoot me an email at summerwood@thewhereofit.com if you’d like to contribute a guest post, or if you’d like to subscribe to a daily email version.

Welcome to the where of it.


2 Responses to “writing the where of it”

  1. Nancy Harrison Says:
    June 20th, 2009 at 1:11 am

    I read an entry of yours about place, which I can’t find now,that referred to the loss of the word “la canada”–(I don’t have a tilde on my computer!)– but as you know, in New Mexico, something may seem lost but it isn’t. It is simply existing quietly, unostentatiously. I live on the other side of the mountains from you, in Ocate, and just down the road from us, about eight miles, is Canada Bonita, very much in existence on the ground and in the language. That is much of what is so spectacular in the life here, comforting and invigorating at the same time. Past, present, all of it, co-existing. Of course, we on this side of the mountain perhaps lean a little more toward the past. The cattle moving down the road to the other pasture are still common here.

  2. Summer Wood Says:
    June 24th, 2009 at 8:59 am

    Hey Nancy,
    That post is at http://www.allochthonous.com/2009/03/16/the-names-of-places-part-two/
    and refers to a talk Estevan Arellano gave at the Taos Land Trust about landscape features and our eroding vocabulary. I’m glad to know la canada is alive and well in your part of the state! I agree, how beautiful it is that the past remains alive in the present here, both in language and in custom. Thanks for writing.

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