...do a brain purge before an experience and write down everything you already assume...
Out the window (OTW) writing
...look out the window for 15 minutes. Keep a notepad nearby to jot down details, ideas, and questions sparked by this session of observation...
In the moment (ITM) writing
... after five minutes of mindfulness (or however much time you need), grab a paper and pen and write some of your honest observations, not the things you think you’re supposed to see and feel...
Rethink “reflection”
...switching back and forth between writing paragraphs with and without personal pronouns...
Retrospective travel writing
Start by compiling your raw materials. Put words on paper, and take frequent steps back to observe what is trying to pull together.
Identify the emergents
...let those emergent memories guide your writing from that experience...
Reconstruct the images
Let images inspire free-form writing of details, sensory or mental.
The opening anecdote
Start a piece with an anecdote.
Lead with dialogue
...consider leading your travel piece with a statement from someone...
Death to fake words
...take a step back and search for any words you wouldn't say in person...
Knitting together with scenes
...If you’re telling the story of a journey, an adventure, or a time in your life, it will naturally have forward movement that, when supported by your transitions, engages the reader and helps them relate to your realizations...
Challenge the structure
...begin with a beautiful detail that emerges and build out from that scene. Take your writing from the previous point and then find another beautiful detail somewhere else in the story to follow it...
Avoid optimism bias
...analyze your own lasting impressions of notable periods in your life. When compared to your current state, do you find a difference in how you experience vs. how you remember?
Combat writer’s block
...if you have no idea how to approach writing about an experience, a location, or a time in your life, test out the usefulness of these resources...
Look at your stories and yourself
...Make sure they present you truly, accurately, and to the best of your ever-evolving ability. Let them connect you to others and help you realize further truths about yourself...
Advice from travel writers
“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”
“Write with a blank wall in front of you.
Always leave time between your experience and your writing of it.
Never research before you go.
Find the hook and base your story around that.”
“I set aside at least a half hour every day and plant myself somewhere – a café, a market, a museum – and write only about the world immediately around me. What I’m seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting–and thinking and feeling. Months later, these words become a precious portal into the heart of that far-off experience.
The benefits of travel writing have to do with coming to a better understanding of the world and of oneself, of learning and more sharply defining what one can appreciate about home, and what one is lacking there, of being able to see life as a pilgrimage and journey in which no answer is ever final and one is really moving from question into deeper question, from one way station to the next.
I can’t repeat this enough: Focus; focus; focus. Look for the telling little details that capture a taste, a person, an experience–the small truths that illuminate the larger truths. And, almost more importantly, write them down!”
“Write drunk, edit sober.”
“Don’t take anyone’s writing advice too seriously.”
“You should travel to see people, you should never imagine that you’re going to become a local, and you should go with as few preconceptions as possible; they’re the death of travel. Also, never underestimate the power of simply sitting and watching; that’s pretty much what I do.”