Back from Arizona

I just got in from a trip to Arizona. Lots of hiking, spa-ing, etc, but Tucson is also the scene of my second novel. Walking around the desert got me thinking of all the ways that place influences a book. Not just in terms of describing the plants and animals and landscape, although even that is important. My recent Kripalu workshop with Natalie Goldberg made me re-appreciate the evocative power of place-specific nouns such as "roadrunner" versus "pelican" or "barrel cactus" versus "aspen."

But I was thinking more of how metaphor arises out of place. I've been trying to think of a way of saying the Kelly is frozen and stuck and numb in the beginning of the novel and as I walked I kept - of course - seeing these rocks. For some reason it jumped out at me that a lot of the stones in Arizona are approximately the size and shape of the human heart and the phrase came to mind "the stone-shaped heart" and I decided that I liked it.

It's small. It's a line, or not even a line. But it's also the sort of thing that pleases me as a writer. There's a little click that happens in your head when you find a word or phrase that seems right, a sense of completion, like a piece coming into a jigsaw and giving you a stronger sense of the overall picture.

Are we more likely to find these "really right" words or phrases if we immerse ourselves in place? I suspect it helps. Especially if you're the sort of writer, as I am, who is better at getting things down than at thinking things up.