What’s my genre? No idea! What do I write about? Lives, I write about lives, family lives, everyday ordinary stories of everyday ordinary people and what they have to go through in their lives.
There’s usually a death; wedding; family; selection of friends of different ages and from different locations; things happen; people travel; people meet, fall in love and have families, that’s what I write about.
Locations used in my current drafts include Yorkshire; Cumbria; Cambridgeshire and London for places they live. Those are all places I’ve lived and know well. Locations where characters travel to include Paris, Gdansk and Treviso, places I know nothing about (I went to Paris once!) I need to get out more!
I picked Paris as I needed a train journey that a family might take together for a long weekend. Gdansk popped into my mind but I now know that you can get a flight from Stanstead to Gdansk and that suits that novel too. I need to find out how long those flights have been running and how you would have got to Gdansk from Cambridge in the 1970’s. Why Treviso? (which I keep writing as Trevisio) In ‘Holiday Stories the story called for a trip to the airport for John to pick up his sister. The nearest airport at the time I wanted him to have to go to the airport happened to have an arrival from Treviso. That’s why. Using real life practicalities helps my imagination explore the locations the families would interact with.
How do you pick the locations in your writing? Whose lives do you write about?
My AtoZchallenge posts are about writing, parts of my novels or some research I need to do for them. I’m not allowing myself to write about anything other than topics linked to the books, my books. The current titles that I’m writing about are ‘Bags’, ‘Holiday stories’ and ‘Dream Gardener’.
lynnelives 