The Blog

A couple of weeks ago the editors of SheWrites website invited members to write blog posts about summer. Summer’s my favorite time of year, so I jumped right in. My post was entitled “Hot Fun in the Summertime.” In it, I talked about how writers can have more fun with their writing this summer. Appropriately, it was a fun post to write, but there’s much more about summer that affects me as a writer and a reader.

Many of my favorite books take place in summer. I love descriptions of fragrant honeysuckle vines and bare feet pounding along dusty dirt roads. I even love talk of sweat and sunburn and crawly bugs. There’s nothing better than the sound of a screen door slamming or a plastic float on a fishing line plopping into a lake. I also love open windows letting in the roar of the surf like Richard Russo describes in Empire Falls. And the practice of going to bed when the heat gets above 104 degrees like the characters do in Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees.

If you look at many of my short stories, you’ll see the characters are often doing things like picking vegetables out of their garden or sitting out in the yard under a tree to keep cool while they talk with their neighbors. In “Henna No. 25,” a story first published in Kansas City Voices and later in New Lines from the Old Line State: An Anthology of Maryland Writers, two of the characters take a portable radio out on the front porch so they can have music for dancing. These are all summer things to do.

I think one of the main reasons I like to read and write about people during summer is that heat heightens emotions. There’s truth behind the expression “hot-blooded.” People feel sexier in summer because they’re wearing fewer clothes. They also get angrier quicker—just ask any mother who’s trying to mind a houseful of kids when the air conditioning goes out. And heat can break your spirit or amp up your longings and desires

The book I talked about in my last post, The Dry Grass of August, is a great example of a story in summer. It wouldn’t have happened the same at any other time.

So I’m looking forward to soaking up summer over the next few months, thinking of new plots and people affected by it and I hope turning them into good stories long after summer fades. In what time of year do your favorite stories happen?