Place as a Reflection of Character
How we connect to landscape, and how we show it in writing
When I was an eager teen aching to live a life of meaning, I couldn’t wait to leave Michigan.
It’s so boring here, I thought. Surely, there were better, more exciting places where I would be better and more exciting. I left three weeks after university graduation, wide-eyed as I landed in the Big Apple, to become a journalist and, I hoped, someone important. Sort of like Sally in When Harry Met Sally. I still chuckle when I think of Harry’s line, “So you’ll write about important people.” Yep.
It took just a year for me to learn that I was not meant for the bright lights of the big city. I packed up and moved south to Washington, D.C., where its low-rise buildings spread out like the spokes of a wheel from our nation’s capitol. I made friends, learned the streets, biked along the root-knotted trails of Rock Creek Park. But still, I missed something.
The friendliness of the Midwest. People waving when I let them in in traffic. People letting me in in traffic! Familiar faces. I missed home, the home I couldn’t wait to leave.
In The Soul of Place, the author Linda Lappin talks about the genius loci, the soul of a location. What distinguishes it as unique. We feel it, we may know it without putting words to it, but as writers, we must find the words so that our readers can know the core of the place and how it informs character and story.
As the war of rhetoric rages on, I’ve been reflecting on what makes a place special. The places that draw me - Michigan, certainly, after those initial teenage misgivings, but also the Scottish Highlands and Israel - hold something deep in the land and fragrant in the air. And this, dear writers, is what we must translate to the page.
Now that I’ve spent decades as an adult living in the place that I fled, I smile when I talk about my home. All the lakes, the very definite seasons, the provinciality of Detroit - a city but not overwhelming or all-encompassing like bigger cities.
There is a hardiness, too, to this place. Detroiters are scrappy. We make something from nothing, and we invented motor transportation and birthed musical movements (Motown, Movement). We created heart and soul and then we watched as the world condemned us for many, many years, and still we soldiered on until, redeemed, we said, yes, our city has always had a beating heart and a fervent soul.
When I landed in Inverness in the summer of 2022, something about the rolling green hills and the silvery waters and the spearing mountains, looking like an easy climb but actually very steep and daunting, told me I had found another home. All the people I met confirmed it. I can’t explain it, but I know it.
And all the times I’ve landed in Israel, I feel like kneeling in the dry earth and kissing the sand, though I can’t say why. That place is one so many people lay claim to and fight over - a little slip of non-fertile land with no valuable resources buried within it except for history. I won’t apologize for being called to a place that Jews have resided for thousands of years. But I have never felt that this place, or any place, is only for me and my people. Isn’t the beauty of place that we can share it and all access the glorious world?
I felt this pull, too, when I visited the massive, calming Redwood trees in northern California. I’ll be going back there next year, this time with writers on retreat, to commune in the forest and breathe in the fresh air that spurs creativity. There, I felt like I could stay, immerse, take in all the life-affirming beauty.
What is it about place that calls to us?
Have you ever considered how place influenced your personality, your sense of self, your mission and purpose?
Detroiters, we don’t give up and we don’t give in. You could say the same for Jews. And wow, the Scots? Fierce fighters whose Diaspora spans the globe.
Perhaps all the places that call to my soul gave birth to survivors, to warriors, to people who refuse to be consumed by conquerors and colonists. Or rhetoric. I mean, seriously, why fight over land? Something about particular places calls to our hearts and souls. Deeply.
This week, consider about the role of place in your writing. It’s more important than you think.
Podcast Roundup
Thanks to so many wonderful podcasters for inviting me on your shows! Among the recently aired, I was interviewed by Elsa Kurt on The Writer’s Tribe podcast, Matty Dalrymple on The Indy Author podcast, and Laurie Wright on Living Your Sparked Second Half. Please give these a listen for some really fun and interesting conversations about writing and publishing!
Also, this Sunday, I’ll be the featured guest on Rabbi Samuel Cohon’s Too Jewish radio. Find it here.
I want to shout out to Michelle Glogovac and Allison Stephanian of The MLG Collective, who are incredibly talented podcast publicists and wonderful people. It is a delight to work with them!
Also, don’t miss episodes of MY podcast, the Make Meaning Podcast, which I’ve been doing since 2018. This month’s guests include author-friends with new books out - Lisa Peers, author of Love at 350 Degrees, and Rochelle Weinstein, author of 7 books including the just-released What You Do To Me.
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Send Me Your Writing Questions!
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With love, Lynne
As for the Scots, it is believed that one of the reasons that the Scots Irish settled in the Appalachians was because it reminded them of their ancestral homeland in the Scottish Highlands. The rolling green hills, temperate climate. It was well suited to them. I suppose they settled the craggy coasts of Nova Scotia for the same reasons. It's funny how people choose similar places in diaspora.
Place is so important to me in my writing. I often write about my personal connection to place, and I like to set my scenes in the backdrop of history and place. For me, it's my home in upstate NY, or my mother's family home in Virginia. Those are places to which I feel connected.
Sometimes, I write about places to which I feel no connection, like a family vacation that I took when I was 9. Or New England, which, though I always say I have no connection to, I still know so much about anyway.