Are you a writer living in a small town or in a large town?

Small town girl, here.

I think what's more condusive to writing is the niche we carve out within our busy lives to simply sit down and do it. How, when and where we write is as personal and distinctive as what we write. Once I'm in front of the computer writing my own world of characters, the outside world of family and everyday living tends to fall away.

Probably the main reason I write!

Welcome to AW...
EM

Rishon's got about 280k folks but it's laid out with lots of parks and flowers in the medians so it feels open and not cramped. I lived in Arlington Virginia for 4 years and that felt similar.

Small town...and not even in town. I live about 5 miles from town on 40 acres. I don't like having people around me.

ETA: The town I live 5 miles from has just under 2000 people in it. (I had to go look up the population...I didn't know)

I live in Croydon NH aka as Coniston the town for which the book was written. Our estimated population is 750 people and 650 canines. We have the oldest operating one room school house in the country and 1-3 graders attend.

We have a Police Chief, no other police force, and he takes 2-3 students from the school each month out to lunch.

In town we have one general store, where you get free coffee with a fill up.
We have a carpet store, and a volunteer Fire Department.
Anita Shreve's book "Light on Snow" took place in my town.

It is quiet to say the least. Except I heard a rumor that there is going to be an underage drinking party tonight near me. Teenagers are basically the same in a small town as a large.

I grew up in a big city and sometimes miss the hustle and bussle. I take about 2-3 trips a year to larger cities. I don't want to get hicktified. This past year I have been to San Diego, Atlantic City, and NYC.

I write no matter where I am, as long as it is quiet in the room.

There's about 400 people in the village that's 5 miles from me.

I hear banjo music.

Small town, baby...small town all the way.

We live in a very small town, sort of a slow-down-on-the-main-highway type of place. The highway is the main street. There's a post office with mail boxes (no street delivery), two quick-eateries, one upper echelon open-for-lunch place, coupla' art galleries for the tourists, two gas stations that bookend the town and about 800 full-time residents. That swells to maybe 2000 when the 'valley' people come up to escape Phoenix heat.

No police department, the sheriif and the highway patrol suffice. We have a volunteer fire department staffed by people who know how to squelch wild fires through long hours actually fighting them.

Elk and deer in the yard (got lots of photos off the deck), and quiet, except for when one of the two bars in town has a karaoke night. The town is on a large highway loop (Phoenix-Verde Valley-Strawberry-Pine-Payson-Phoenix) that the Harley crowd loves to run on weekends (some stopping for karaoke) such that the sound of Harley rumble echoes off the mountains all day and into the night.

Small town all the way. Wouldn't trade it for the noise of any city.

30-minutes-to-the-nearest-bookstore small. I'm hoping to move closer to civilization, preferably before they shut down the interstate in my area (the dumbest roadwork plans come from MDOT, I swear)....but only a little closer. I'd like to be able to walk to a bar if I want to, and not have to plan my day around getting groceries. And having pizza delivered might occasionally be nice...but I also don't want to hear nothing but traffic when I open the windows, or breathe car exhaust, or have to go driving just to find a field to walk in.


I just want everything.


But I'm pretty sure I can write anywhere, given an adequate adjustment period.

Although my town is listed on Virginia state maps, it took a lot of doing. It wasn't for a long time; that's how small it is. We have a general store that used to house the post office, but the USPS closed it recently due to lack of interest. There's somewhere around 200 people in a twenty mile radius. The houses are clustered, five or six in a general vicinity. I live in a cluster of 5, but we're not exactly packed against each other. My front porch looks out on a creek, and behind the creek? Hills and a meadow that used to serve as a pasture. Now the farmer's grandson uses it just to make hay, so it grows and grows then the grass is cut about 3 times a summer. I like it. It relaxes me, but there's still that hour's commute to work which is becoming steadily more difficult due to gas prices.

The penitentiary I currently live in, is in a small, isolated area. But it has a large population. So kinda both, I guess.

I grew up in a small town and now I live in a small city.

Out in the country, and 4 miles from a small town. A bigger town (maybe 40,000) is about 30 miles away. I despise cities.

Town of just under 4000. Three hour drive to the nearest traffic light.

Large city (though probably not compared to the US), but I do have the best of both worlds in that I live in a quiet area of that city, with a really big park just across the road where I can go for quiet, and my parents live on the other side of Scotland in a village with approx. 5,000 people, with their house right on the edge of it so right in the country. I can go there too if I fancy a change.

Saying that, right now I'm on a research trip to London for my vampire WIP and I've had loads of ideas already. I never had any problem writing when I lived here either.

Medium. Population's nudging toward 6 figures.

We live in a restored old three story funeral home across a gravel road from a very old cemetery. Got 20 acres, a barn and my 'rainhouse'. Nearest neighbor...can't see 'em from here.

I live in a small town, but not small enough to know everybody. Population is about 20,000, which more than doubles during the academic year when the students at our MAJOR University descend upon us.

Moving here from a small city was the impetus (along a circuitous path) behind my becoming a writer. If I hadn't moved here, I'd be doing other things.

Upbeat said:

I've always thought of Scotland as a beautiful, relatively quiet place to live

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Quiet? I'm just remembering my years living in a flat in Leith...

I grew up in a small town, between 8 and 10K. Unfortunately it got discovered by tourists when I was a teen and has since ballooned to twice its size, getting even bigger when all the weekend city folk drive up. It's depressing now to see it overrun with expensive wine shops and hoity-toity art galleries. You know it's bad when the shop owners treat you like trash because you're wearing cutoffs and an old shirt. My dad still knows all of the real locals, but that way of life will be gone soon.

Right now I live in a small city but it's essentially a bedroom community, a strip of stores along the freeway. I think I'd prefer to live in a smaller town with more community, or a big city with more opportunities.

mcnorth said:

Town of just under 4000. Three hour drive to the nearest traffic light.

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Is your avatar the girl who was in Family Ties as the youngest daughter?