On writing: Building a fictional world in a real town

Shortly before my father died we were talking about my first novel, Mystic Shove. I described the concern I had with the location for my book. It is set in Mystic, Ct.--a real town [a great town!] which wasn't the problem...the problem was that I had added a marina right off the downtown waterfront where one didn't exist. Beyond that, I had the protagonist jogging to a beach a town over, where he could look out at this lighthouse, which plays a big part in the book, and the problem there was that the daily jog would probably have been about ten miles each way...Blaine is in amazing shape, but a 20 mile jog each morning wouldn't have left much time for anything else...so in the book I say it's about three miles each way.

My father listened to all of this and then smiled. "Geoff, that's the beauty of writing fiction..."

...and he was exactly right  Sure, get your facts right where you can, but if they don't work then change the map, the character or the weather, even...that's the beauty of fiction.