Settings Mean A Lot

Key West Sunset - Sikes photo

 

It surprised me when the list owner of one of the romance groups to which I belong told me that a blog about the Hemingway House did not relate to romance writing. For me, it does. After all, Ernest Hemingway wrote in one of the most inspiring settings I have seen. Maybe his books cannot be classified as romances, but looking out a wall of windows (as he did from his writing studio) into a tropical setting invites the imagination to go wild in a myriad of directions. At least, it invites mine.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge," Albert Einstein once said.

Imagine that! A man of his brilliance knew the importance of imaginative inspiration. The idea must first grow in the mind before anything can be created.

The idea for the painting comes before the blank canvas can be filled. Even if it begins only with a spattering of paint. We have to decide to spatter and where.

The ideas for a novel comes as characters grow inside our heads. I think they grow more easily when we have an amazing and inspiring setting like Hemingway found in Key West and later on in Cuba, another tropical location.

Settings inspire writers and artists. They inspire romance. Settings mean a lot.

Mary Montague Sikes