#READLocalDC Blog Hop!
I’ve been asked to participate in a blog hop for DC area writers and authors. They want us to mention how the Washington, D.C are inspires our writing.
None of my novels have taken place in the District itself, thus far. Yet to be this close to the nation’s capital does affect the process of my writing in numerous ways.
Perhaps the most specific way, (though certainly not limited to this area) is the Constitutional right to compose writing on any topic and theme that I wish. I am literally about an hour away from the document itself, you know. I’ve seen it. (Briefly. They like to keep the line moving quickly at the Archives.) And of course laws for everyone are passed there…just down the proverbial highway from me.
To write well is to not put constraints on one’s vision. It is easy to forget when one is a writer in safe place to create art that there are places on the earth wherein writers can and have been put in jail for what they have written. It’s not limited to news, either. Plenty of novelists and poets have ended up behind bars in countries that viewed their work as subversive to the regime.
These rights apply of course to the entire country, not just my area. Still, I never quite get over the fact that the literal guarantee, signed by the Founders is for me, as compared to most others, quite local indeed.
Thanks for reading! To return to the #ReadLocalDC Blog Hop on Ellen Smith’s website, click here: http://bit.ly/readlocaldc
- Posted in: Miscellany
Ty Unglebower 
You are so right–our freedom to write whatever we choose is one that I often take for granted. It is pretty cool to live close enough to DC that we can go to visit the Archives or see the buildings where laws for our whole nation are decided. Thanks for joining in to the #ReadLocalDC blog hop!
Happy to do so. Thank you for asking me.
And they are such beautiful buildings, too. I wonder whether their beauty and the goodness that springs from them (aspirationally, by and large) are related.