Getting better at travel writing - Notes from Don George's blog

I read a blog entry this week by Don George that I thoroughly enjoyed, and I'm using this entry to record my notes from his three-part series about travel writing. I found it incredible helpful in getting me to think about how I could better write about my travel experiences.

Here are my notes from his tips:

Plotting your story before you go

1. Where do you want to go and why do you want to go there?
1. Festivals, spiritual sites, historic sites, beliefs, rituals, wildernesses, legacies, characters
• Things that stand out as potential passion points and connections
2. Skeletal itinerary
• Encompasses the history, culture and attractions that define the place
3. Frame the journey in the context of a quest
1. Going to X in search of Y
• Lends a built-in narrative arc

Finding and focusing your story on the road

1. What’s the story?
1. Essence of a place, fundamental characteristics
2. Alluring places, people and experiences – passion points
3. Focus, focus, focus
• Details that capture a taste, a person, an experience
• Use all senses: Sight, smell, hearing, touch, taste, thinking, feeling
• Write Them Down!!

Exercise: set aside half an hour per day to sit somewhere (café, museum, market, etc.) and write about the world around you. (What are you seeing, smelling, hearing, touching, tasting, thinking, and feeling?)

2. Record dialogue as it occurs
1. Rhythm, vocabulary, accent
• Can convey essential information and fill out the character of a place and its people with no explanation
3. Set aside time at the end of every day to write down the most important elements, experiences, and lessons of that day.
1. Quickly jotted notes
2. Key words
4. What am I learning?
1. What is the place and experience revealing to me?
2. What gifts are they bestowing on me?
3. How are they challenging and expanding me?

Re-creating the stepping stones of your journey

1. Write down the:
1. Most memorable experiences
2. Main lessons learned
• Pick one lesson that really inspires passion and offers layers of experience, connection and meaning
• This becomes the principal point of the story
2. How did I learn that lesson? What were the steps that led me to understand it?
1. Identify and write down the steps, tracing the journey to the lesson
2. Pick out a few essential stepping stones
• Recall as vividly as possible the experiences, details and characters involved in each

Additional Notes:

• The story is not about me, it’s about the place.
• Ruthlessly edit the experience, cutting away everything that doesn’t contribute to the reader reaching the same place, the same illumination

To read Don George's posts for the full depth of his insights, visit the following link:

The Quality Quotient: Travel Writing That Matters

Painting in Progress

Part 2 >>

Project goal - courtesy of Pinterest

I'm taking my second painting class, and up until yesterday have been feeling a little bit ambivalent about it, to be honest. Which was quite upsetting for me, since when I do something, my preference is always to enjoy it to the fullest.

And then last night, our teacher brought in some additional mediums - things you can add to acrylic paint that modify it's behavior, and ... WOW!!! So Much FUN!!!! I'm so excited to incorporate some of the various textures into my current project, I can hardly contain myself.

Which, incidentally, if anyone is wondering, is how you should feel about a hobby.

Underpainting - completed October 27, 2014

Qualities I admire

I read a blog that made me think last week from the Travelettes; a group of female travelers I just recently discovered. The post was titled 8 Qualities I Admire in a Woman and the writer expressed her desire to become a woman who travels, as opposed to the travelling girl she is currently. Her list of qualities of a Woman includes:

1. Reverence
2. Perseverance
3. Ignorance
4. Living
5. Tenderness
6. Self-belief
7. Uniqueness
8. Spunk

This, of course, led me to consider the qualities that I value highly, and would like to expand in my own life.

I immediately turned, of course, to my favorite source of information, the ever-growing internet. And the Google machine gave me lots of things to consider.

Here is the list of qualities that I both admire and would like to demonstrate:

1. Well-spoken: Kind, considerate, tactful, articulate, complimentary, respectful
2. Well-dressed: Modest, occasion-appropriate, body-flattering, well-groomed
3. Well-behaved: Civil, graceful, organized, courteous, generous, polite

And in addition, I value:

• Strength of Character
• Independence
• Integrity

...

The list could really go on, but essentially I want to be the kind of person that makes other people feel better about themselves, while gaining their respect. In any situation.

Liver, then bacon.

The art of procrastination is one I learned at an early age. In kindergarten, my teacher informed my parents that I had the capability to do well in life, but that I was prone to procrastination, and I would probably always struggle with it.

Perhaps a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I'm not claiming that I understood what procrastination meant at the age of five, but it is a characteristic that I have always been conscious of.

I am in the process now, at the age of 37, of setting up a home office. One that I intend to be brilliantly useful, and charming, and witty, and debonair, and inspiring. Quite a bit to ask of an 8 x 10 basement room with a small window and a closet, but that is what I'm aiming for, all the same.

In pursuit of the inspiring aspect, I have been trying to decide which quotes to put up on the wall. Do I want quotes to make me feel better about myself as a person? To help me choose what I do for work? Trust me, there are a lot of different quotes I could turn into wall art.

Until today, my favorites have been by Dr. Seuss:

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.