Celebrate!

It’s all about celebrations around here this month. Or, as we like to say, “shell-ebrations”!   

In our household, we have my husband and my wedding anniversary and the tortoises turn 17. 

 

Outside our household, we’re sending happy birthday wishes to one teen and…well, let’s just say, one hasn’t-been-a-teen-for-quite-awhile, and also congratulations to a high school graduate and a college graduate. 

 

Even though I’m basking in the joy of it all, I still feel those waves of nostalgia lapping at my toes. Sigh. Where does the time go?

 

WRITING

I’ve got drafts of two stories going. I hope to have one ready to submit mid-month.

 

READING

The novel, Ask for Andrea, by Noelle W. Ihli utterly broke my heart, and The Birthday Party by Shalini Boland took me on a wild, twisting ride.

 

WATCHING

We have lots of things on our To Watch list, but we haven’t really gotten to any of them. We did re-watch – and still loved! - the first Downton Abbey movie. The next two movies will be new to us.

 

*****

 

Are you celebrating – big, small, anything at all! - this month? Do you know where the time has gone? Any relatively recent TV shows or movies you’d recommend we bump to the top of our To Watch list?

Novel Needs - Where? When?

This is going to sound like an odd question but here goes - do I need to specify the time period of my novel and the state where my fictionalized town is located?

Here's why I'm asking - I want my novel to have a "timeless" quality. I don't want to talk about cell phones or texting or specific politicians or actors or natural disasters - things that could "date" the story. Now, it would be different if any of those things were integral to the story but they really aren't, or at least not that I can see at this point in the writing. (And this could change in the future, I suppose.)

I also don't feel any pull toward putting the story in a particular state. It doesn't feel like it belongs in State A or State B.  If it did, it would go there and I would make sure all the necessary details (flora, fauna, slang, etc.) were added. The story takes place in a fictionalized town that becomes almost like a character itself but I want that town to be Anywhere, USA, to exist anywhere the reader's mind wants to put it. [Side note: I just read in Robert McKee's STORY that "There is no such thing as a portable story." Agh!!!]

Is it enough to show a passage of time? Is it enough to describe a town so it feels real?

I'm not sure it's possible to do this. I would love feedback not only from my writer friends, but also from those book lovers out there. How much does it matter to you, as a reader, to not be able to fix a specific time and place on a story?