When you write ghost stories, PLACE is hugely important – it’s got to be really a character in the book, just as much as the human characters are.   But this week I’ve been thinking about PLACE and how it influences us as authors.

I’ve been doing a lot of interviews about the book, as we do, and it’s been my experience with interviews that you always, always learn something about yourself and your work, and specifically your relationship to your work, from the questions you get asked.  

Now, it makes sense that interviewers are focusing a lot on the California vs. North Carolina dynamic in my book, because it’s about a California psychology professor who impulsively flees to North Carolina after she catches her fiancé cheating on her.  (Actually, dreams her fiancé is cheating on her, in exactly the scenario that she catches him in later.)   I wrote the book very much from the point of view of a fish out of water, experiencing this (very strange!) new place for the first time, and I and she had a lot to say about it.

But a question has been coming up in these interviews that surprises me – even though I’ve been asked it before.  I just forgot, until I got it twice in a row this week:  

“How did growing up in California influence you as a writer and your decision to become a writer?”

That got me thinking.  Of course growing up in California had worlds to do with my becoming a writer, and I’ve been aware – maybe not for always, but for a very long time – that I was incredibly lucky to have been born there. Actually, I was incredibly lucky to have been born in the US to begin with, and to my particular parents in particular, but today I’m going to talk about California, and I hope the rest of you will see where I’m going and be moved to talk about your home states/cities as well.

Until just recently, except for short (a year or less) forays living in different states and cities, which I find an extremely inspiring and important thing to do, regularly), I have lived all of my life in California. Berkeley, Los Angeles, Palo Alto, San Francisco – alternating large stretches of time between Northern and Southern California (which are different universes, at least to Californians. I won’t even get into the “What is Northern California, Middle Calif., Southern California?” debate).

I’ve also been lucky enough to visit every state of the Union.  And it struck me from the time I was a very small child, on our yearly family cross-country road trips, that states in the US are really almost like different countries are on other continents. Every US state has a mythos, carefully crafted by tourist boards and state and local governments and its special geography and sheer weight of history. Each has its own dialect, its own political philosophies, its own way of dress, its state birds and mollusks and legends.

When you think of California, what do you think? The Gold Rush, the Hollywood dream machine, “fruits and nuts”, hippies, free love, beaches, granola, feminists, surfers, yoga, cults, movie star politicians (sorry about that last one, people, not MY fault).

Those are the legends, but it’s also all true.

If you want to be a movie star, come to California. If you want to be a movie writer, come to California. If you want to strike it rich, come to California. If you’re gay you most definitely want to come to California.

Now, my parents are scientists and they didn’t want me to go into the arts any more than any loving and caring parents ever want their child to go into the arts. But we were living in California and alongside my parents’ parental messages (“Go to college, get a degree, find a steady profession, save for retirement”) were all of these ever-present California messages: “Follow your dreams!”, “Be yourself!”, “Do what you love and the money will follow!”, “Question authority!”, “A woman’s place is in the House – and in the Senate!”, “Free your ass and your mind will follow…”

Well, you know. When those things are constantly projected all around you, you believe they’re possible. It’s like hypnosis.

So yes, while I had the challenge that every aspiring writer or artist has in breaking free of loving parental messages, I also had a lot of cultural programming – make that counter-cultural programming – in my favor. There’s no question that made the whole career path easier.

After I graduated from Berkeley (and THAT is a place unlike any other, the People’s Republic of Berkeley – it’s like living in Wonderland, or Oz. It’s no wonder at all that I can’t write straight reality to save my life, because Berkeley is simply supernatural), my idea of a practical career plan was to move down to LA to become a screenwriter.

But in California, moving down to LA to become a screenwriter WAS a practical career plan. I had a degree in theater. I had a resume of production experience three yards long. I’d written, directed and produced full-length, large cast musicals.

When you’re a writer no one ever asks to see a resume, of course, but it all meant that I had trained for the job – I wasn’t some naïve, flying in on a wing and a prayer.

And in California, the movie industry IS an industry, just like any other industry. You are paid to do the work you do because if you’re good at it, it makes the corporation money. It doesn’t get any more practical than that.
But – writing – all writing – is also a dream job. And I believed I could do it because my state taught me to follow my dreams.

So I’m wondering. What are your state legends? How did your state and/or city influence your career path? Did it help or hinder your personal dreams?

PS – for those who were wondering, the state mollusk of California is the sea slug.

But that’s another post entirely.