Place is the most pivotal fact of connection. The attention to detail and precision, the ability to be specific, the willingness to offer context--all of these make for writing that welcomes connection with a reader. And connection with the writer. By identifying and branding our experience, with exactness and with truth, we claim it as our own. And nothing could be more intimate.

Once we channel the deeper feelings flowing beneath the surface of details, we make possible writing that touches something much deeper in ourselves and in our readers.