Skip to main content

Travel days set me back

Image
By
....I have grand ideas of writing awesome riveting stories about the people and places and cultures we encounter in our travels that will grab an audience of people who can't wait to read the next piece. Of course I planned to post them with consistent regularity. Yah, right. Instead I seem to write mildly interesting posts with sporadic frequency. I'm pleased with much of what I write, but I get discouraged about all that I don't get written. I often feel like these places are slipping by my window and I just can't capture them all. Certainly the best time to write about a place is while I'm living there, but I just can't seem to get 'er done. So then I fear that I will lose it. Lose the memory, lose the moment, lose the beauty of the setting or the fun of the story. And then I feel sad.

 At those moments of sadness or discouragement, I sometimes remind myself that John Steinbeck didn't write a single word of his classic Travels with Charley while on the road. Nope. He traveled the country on that epic journey without even beginning to write the story. It was all written after the fact. After the trip had ended. Well, that's a relief! If Steinbeck can do it, maybe I can do it. Of course, I am now already a couple epic journeys behind.

 Read more about how travel days mess with the travel writing...



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

All in different places

By
We "gather" in this spot because of our common interest in writing. It is very possible that we will have little else in common - and that's okay. But even within the realm of writing, we are likely to be quite different from each other. One of the obvious differences will be that of genre - starting with fiction or non-fiction. I hope and believe that we can learn from each other across that divide. Personally, I can't envision being able to write fiction and I certainly admire you who can. We probably also have varying levels of intensity and desire about this writing thing. Some are dabbling while others may be quite serious. For that matter, maybe some of us haven't even thought about whether to dabble or to be serious about it. Then there's the matter of how far we are on this writing journey. Have you established some kind of writing habit yet? Have I set any writing goals? Do we want to? So, since we are all in different places and headed in various dir...
3 comments
Read more

There is life to live

By
Sometimes life gets in the way - or so it seems. What a silly statement. What could be more important than life? I guess I was thinking of the fact that sometimes life gets in the way of writing, but then I guess that's better than writing getting in the way of life.  Hmmm... I have lived through some examples of life getting in the way of the writing I want to do and the subsequent re-evaluation of my goals.  Isn't that just the way life is?  We all have to find our own answers to the work/life balance questions. My writing instructor Jeff Goins writes about having a life worth writing about . I've written on this topic myself.  On my other blog I've told about how travel days can mess with travel writing  and on this one about how busy days can set me back and discourage me. Yep, yep; there is  life to live .  I want to live it and I want to write about it - and so I am.
Post a Comment
Read more

Morning Pages

By
I had been lamenting the fact that I haven't been able to focus on writing regularly in the past weeks and probably won't be able to for another several weeks. I have expressed sadness about that, but want to be patient with myself during this intense transition time. However, just as I was accepting that reality, I came across (yet again!) the concept of keeping morning pages. Once again, I was inspired and wanted to do it - but this time there was a different twist. Whereas before I had tended to think of morning pages as an exercise, a discipline, something that I should do, this time I caught a glimpse of the benefits - immediate benefits, in fact. I had been saying that I didn't have the focus necessary to write. Interestingly, this blogger told how morning pages gave her focus for her day. Hmmm... Is it possible that this could actually HELP me during these weeks - rather than being one more chore on my list? Worth considering. And worth trying again. This...
2 comments
Read more