Sense of Place

I tend not to provide much setting in my stories. My characters could be any sort of people, located Anywhere, USA. So one of the things always lurking in the back of my creative brain is the desire to incorporate local landscape and culture into my writing more. In one small effort, today’s shorty grew from a description of the river that bordered the back of our property growing up. That bit has been in my idea file for a while, so it needed its own space.

Working Title: Our River
1st Sentence: A narrow river ran through the woods behind our house.
Favorite Sentence: The “swimming part” would be a place for the kids to get away from the Virginia sun, a place to grow long and sleek, to revel in owning not just a hunk of earth but a river.
Word Length: 328

This photo of a swimming spot on the Squannacook river in NH (by Ivan Massar, 1924-, for EPA 8/1973, NARA record: 2543545) looks a lot like our small swimming spot on the North Anna in Louisa Co., VA.