In the Ohio series, geography begat magic… one of those little inspirations that’s really paying off

I’m writing the Ohio novels in a highly fictionalized version of the town in which I live. I loved this place for a huge chunk of my life even though I spend most of my life away from it.

One of the things I did was to copy off a map of the place… and then start doodling on it.

And the doodles have really paid off over the last week-ish, as some sort of funky features of the town caught my attention. I set a couple of questions floating in the back of my mind:

Why does the river matter?

Why does the ancient flood plain matter?

Why does the SHAPE of the town matter?

Yesterday and today, I found out. Four books in, everything that has been happening since book one suddenly clicked — I had not imagined any of this until the scene and all its implications bounded along the balance beam like Mary Lou Retton — at at the ending, just nailed it.

It was the kind of day you really want to have in your writing… and hitting my wordcount at the same time did not hurt.

I love these books, and this world.

1360 words of 1250 planned for. And 55,031 total.


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