Create Vivid Settings In Your Writing This Summer

I often struggle to find my writing groove in the summer. This past year, I officially became an “empty nester” with two kids away at college from August through May. Their absence has given me more time to write. When the kids were younger, I had a hard time balancing my summer schedule with pool time, enrichment activities, and work. I’ve been freelancing or working remote for most of my career, so this is nothing new. But among the juggling, I embrace the opportunities for new ideas I always find during my summer breaks and travels. 

Last summer, we rented a home in the Boone/Blowing Rock area of North Carolina to help my son get acclimated in his new college town.

My husband graduated from the same university, so he was excited to share some of his favorite hikes and waterfalls with us. Of course, being a true crime podcaster, I couldn’t help but think of the many people who’d gotten lost in the local forests, which are part of the Appalachian Trail. I began taking notes and produced Episode 105: Missing and Murdered in the High Country once we returned home. 

You don’t have to travel far from home to get numerous ideas for your writing. Unique settings are all around us. Here are a few tips:

Become a tourist in your hometown. Interested in writing about food and drink? Check out a few of your local restaurants and create a round-up of “The Five Best Cocktails and/or Appetizers on Main Street.” Look for any unique places that might be worth pitching to a lifestyle magazine (regional or local). Not long ago, I had a ghost tour company reach out to me, so I’ve already planned to take the tour and write about my experience. (As you can see from this blog post, I love to write about ghost tours!)

Immerse yourself in setting. I live near Lake Norman, a man-made body of water in North Carolina with a backstory that’s always fascinated me. Engineers from the Duke Power Company built a dam on the Catawba River to provide hydroelectricity. When they did this, they flooded 32,000 acres of surface, including remains of a summer camp that opened in 1938, the site of the Battle of Cowan’s Ford, and one of the earliest cotton mills built in the mid-1800s and the surrounding village town. With houses, old homesites and highways, and even an abandoned airplane lurking beneath the water, there is plenty to spark the imagination. New York Times-bestselling writer Megan Miranda lives in the area and I imagine her book, Daughter of Mine, which takes place in a lake town where secrets are revealed once the water level in the lake drops, was inspired by our infamous body of water.

Explore your local history. Historians are a wealth of information if you’re looking for things to write about. I interviewed Chris Stonestreet for a Halloween podcast episode and learned about a cold case from our area that took place in 1937. He’s written history books about Civil War battles and shared a ghost story about British Redcoats people have seen marching through a nearby town. Visit any of your local museums and libraries and keep your eye out for interesting stories and exhibits that you could turn into an article pitch or inspiration for an essay or work of fiction.

This article originally appeared in the WOW! Women on Writing June Markets Newsletter.