What is it about this state that makes a guy (or gal) whip out a pen and start writing? Mind you, as I've always maintained, New Hampshire is one of the most beautiful states in the Union, so the New Hampshire-as-Muse is at least partially understandable, but still -- this place is absolutely crawling with writers (which in some circumstances can be understood to mean, "competition"). It's probably sufficient for publishers when they receive a manuscript to see that it's post-marked New Hampshire; "This one's a shoe-in. Publish it!" Do northern Yankee farmers have some hidden well of angst somewhere beneath their granite, beating hearts that compels them to grab paper and quill and start pumping out prescient prose and poetry -- or, in the case of native New Hampshirites Adam Sandler and Sarah Silverman, fart jokes? in England, farmers go mad and start faking alien crop circles in their fields, but in New Hampshire, they start writing haiku about stone walls. I, myself, am a victim of the New Hampshire muse, having already penned a book and planning for more, but I'm just a pedestrian writer -- New Hampshire has driven otherwise productive and happy citizens such as J.D. Salinger, Jodi Picoult and Robert Frost to forsake practical employment for the pen. The ultimate litmus test for this writing compulsion is whether the greatest American writer ever visited New Hampshire, and indeed, Mark Twain had a series of pictures taken in 1906 while visiting in Dublin, New Hampshire, in the state's southwestern Monadnock region close to both the Vermont and Massachusetts borders. I guess the question is, who left a greater stamp on whom, Mark Twain or New Hampshire...?
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