This weekend I realized that I’ve been setting my story in San Francisco when I’ve been visualizing it in NYC. D’oh! I’ve been imagining House Ibsen’s exterior as an old brownstone. While this wouldn’t have been an insurmountable problem, many of my characters work in film and fashion, and these industries are much larger in the Big Apple. I’m working with a Fall 2001 time frame because I know I want Hurricane Katrina to take place during the second novel. This means 9/11 will play a larger role than I’d originally planned.

Most of all this means that all the background work I’ve done on setting my first novel in San Francisco—divvying up the city into territories, choosing real world locations for certain scenes, etc.—has to be redone for NYC. Hopefully I’ll be able to use the SF background I’ve developed for a later installment. I don’t know where my characters will take me after Hurricane Katrina, but they’ll probably hit the West Coast eventually.

I’m happy I caught this now! I feel a little foolish, but it can be difficult to get out of our own heads and see the gaps in our thinking.

Have you had to make a similar turn-around in your writing? Please tell me about it in the comments!