The Saturday Writing Quote

Setting is hugely important to me, as reader and writer. So I liked this observation from a young short story writer who writes of her native Nevada:

“Early on I was often crippled about being able to write about anything. … Eventually I decided to choose place as my form. … By the end of the collection, I was actually looking at a map and thinking, where haven’t I written about? I couldn’t really start a story without understanding where it was set–because I can’t really start to think about who these characters are and what kind of trouble are they going to get into if I don’t even know what they see when they get up in the morning.”

— Claire Vaye Watkins, author of the story collection Battleborn (Riverhead, 2012), quoted in Book Page, August 2012

 

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