The Five Pillars That Sustain My Writing

Merriam-Webster offers two definitions of pillar: 1) “a firm upright support for a superstructure” and 2) “a fundamental precept.” Buildings need pillars, either to prevent them from collapsing or because, well, they look nice. Writers need pillars too. We use words to construct a narrative superstructure — ideally an invisible one — that supports our ideas.

“Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward,” said the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. And so it is with writing. The pillars are always there, under-girding our pages, but we’re moving too fast to notice. So, I’ve finally slowed down and taken stock of my five pillars.

1) I am a place person

These days, the word “geography” has an outdated, musty air to it. Isn’t geography so 20th Century? Hasn’t digital technology enabled us to transcend space, or at least tame it? No, it hasn’t. Place matters and it matters now more than ever. Where we are affects who we are. That is a theme that runs throughout my writing. In my first book, The Geography of Bliss, I travel the world in search of the happiest places and the lessons they offer. In The Geography of Genius, I explore “genius clusters,” places that produce an inordinate number of brilliant minds and good ideas.