Hemingway wrote many of his books while traveling in far
away places.
Ian Flemming wrote much of the James Bond novels on the
island of Jamaica.
I can see it now - you wake up to the sound of waves
crashing onto the beach a few yards from your bungalow with a mind full of
fresh material for your current work in progress. You walk out onto the verandah and dive off
into the fresh ocean waters instead of standing in a 4x4 foot shower thinking
about your commute and the daily grind of your job.
On the way out of the ocean you grab a papaya off one of the
bushes next to the bungalow and slice it open with your pocketknife for your
morning breakfast.
After dressing you find a cup of fresh Jamaican coffee
sitting next to your laptop and you settle in for a few hours of uninterrupted writing
before calling it a day and heading down to town to see what trouble you can
get into. The streets are alive with action and vibrant color.
This seems like a much better choice than dressing the kids,
making their lunches, and merging onto the highway in your car to find that
you’re joining a 5 mile long traffic jam while you watch the red digits on your
in dash clock creep closer to 8:00 am.
While it’s most likely impossible to believe we can run off
to a tropical island to write out next masterpiece it is probable that we can
plan and take a vacation once in a while. The choices of travel destinations
range from the inexpensive to the exquisite.
I remember a period of my life when I used to load up my VW
Bug with a cooler, a dome tent, and my girlfriend and head off to the forests
of northern Arizona to camp for the weekend.
We’d spent the days hiking and the evenings drinking wine, and grilling
over a campfire as the sun waned and the stars spilled across the dark skies.
Writers come up with many of their ideas based on previous
experience. Travel enriches our lives, relaxes us, and provides us with new ideas
for our writing. Most of us travel to recharge our batteries after months or
years of the same wake, eat, drive, work, drive, eat, relax, sleep cycle that
we perform daily. Day in and day out our lives become a series of tasks done
almost out of habit. We forget what it’s like to let loose and relax until we
have the chance to take a vacation. Then after a few days we think wow is this what it feels like to be
relaxed?
What do you think?
Have you traveled anywhere recently? Did you feel your creativity increase?
