When I first began writing fiction, crafting children's books, I wrote from the places of my own childhood--Oklahoma and Kansas and Kansas City. One of my short stories was also set in Estes Park, Colorado, where I vacationed with my parents each summer. The one exception would be, Indian Shoes, the early reader chapter book set in Chicago, which I wrote in Austin, and it's the last of that phase of my work.
I can clearly remember thinking the first time I lived here that I'd love to write something set in real Austin, but I just didn't know it well enough yet. It was so different from that folksy, rural/small-town, extended-family atmosphere that defined my childhood (despite the fungiburb neighborhoods). This place and I had to sort of blend together. Marinate.
Now, looking forward, both my next YA anthology short story and my upcoming gothic fantasy novel are set in the bohemian/arts/hippie/music scene of Central/South Central Austin. Both very South Congress, in fact. They're infinitely edgier, mature, and more confident works. As is everything in development. I'm more interested and increasingly committed to the upper teen/twentysomething perspective.
I'm not sure what this means exactly. I guess you could chart it out and say that in my early stories I returned to the settings of my younger years, and, as I've developed as a writer, I'm shifting fictional stages to those that parallel my own personal growth. It's not that it's any easier to write for younger kids; it's just that my own voice seems to be settling better with older, more grown-up characters and audiences. Of all my inner ages, I seem most stuck on seventeen to eighteen.
But in any case, I don't tend to write outside my own stomping grounds. Not because I think it's a bad idea intrinsically, but just maybe because those are the realities closest to me and that gives me an advantage in crafting believability.
Which, you know, given my subject preferences, can be something of a challenge.
