Managing time on the road as a travel writer
The essence of travel writing resides in the stories we live on the road: from the narratives of greats such as Chatwin, Theroux, Darlymple and others, to the tiny weblogs of your latest holidays, we are surrounded by more travel literature than what we can possibly consume. Some of it provides outstanding quality and catches a still literary photography of cultures, times and moments; other presents less vivid accounts of a person’s daily activities, a more monotonous list of facts and places.
Besides its quality, one thing is actually clear about travel literature: like most writing, it is more time consuming than reading. And it may be more easily done from your apartment, after returning from your trip, than from the road.
Italian travel writer Giorgio Bettinelli (Picture credit: www.twowheelsblog.com )
Sparing an hour or two per day for some literary production is definitely more feasible than finding time from a busy schedule of train departures, sightseeing, meetings with local friends. Italian travel writer Giorgio Bettinelli – may you rest in peace, my friend – , a man who travelled the world on a Vespa scooter for 14 years and visited more than 150 countries, confessed me that he never wrote as he travelled. Too much time sitting on the motorbike, too much stress, and the very few moments of pure concentration could only spoil his creative stream. He preferred to return to Taiwan or China where he resided with his wife, kick back and type away many hours per day for two to three months, and then set off again for the next adventure.
Unfortunately for most of us, unlike Giorgio, we do not have a publisher anticipating book royalties, and we have to struggle with writing assignments to survive. Freelance writing, an already poorly paid activity, becomes very difficult to manage as we cross borders and move along the world’s maps. Personally, as I am travelling hard this year, I have found it quite exhausting to return from 7 hours day hikes and find myself forced to progress with my writing. Like a good schoolboy, I type away until my eyes collapse, and sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with the laptop’s led blinking at my sleepy face.
Travelling and writing, as two antithetical activities, require time and dedication spent pursuing a final goal: discovery, and creation. As much as an expatriate can manage writing time into an organized weekly schedule – because let’s face it, being an expatriate can be enlightening, but it is still very far from the joy and freedom of reckless travel! -, a travel writer may have a problem jotting down his best lines as he moves across the globe.
A laptop is definitely a great tool to pursue this activity, but it generally works best when the writer stays in a place longer, and has less time or drive to discover. In my case, as I greatly enjoy exploring and the outdoors, I find myself more on the field than at the coffee table typing. The time spent riding buses or the train is sometimes not productive due to the extreme bumpy conditions of my favorite Asian roads, or the continuous opportunities to meet new local friends and indulge into conversation…
How do you manage your writing on the road, being it travel related or not? Do you prefer to keep a daily schedule, or do you take notes and write when you return at home?
I think this is an interesting topic; especially poignant as I was good enough to type this article during a bumpy bus ride, crossing the Bardia National Park in Western Nepal… for this time, I am giving a good “dedicated travel writing” example 🙂
April 5th, 2012 at 12:17 pm
I’m not a travel writer. I guess you could say I’m aspiring to be one, yet I’ve failed to jump into the vagabonding lifestyle. From what I’ve been gathering, I’d say a lot of the writers take detailed notes along the way but don’t sew everyting together until they are in one place. The finality of a trip and it’s reflection probably lends itself to creating better conclusions. Rolf wrote his book “Vagabonding” I believe in one place. Not sure about his Marco Polo book.
April 5th, 2012 at 2:16 pm
Rolf…you write that, “…I have found it quite exhausting to return from 7 hours day hikes and find myself forced to progress with my writing.” The fact that you are even disciplined enough to write after that kind of day is admirable. Most writers can’t do it that way.
The best way I know to ensure something, anything important gets done…is to do it as part of a ritualized daily routine that begins first thing in morning…preferably before anyone else is awake…and before anything else can distract you.
The basic premise I teach is that if writing is the activity that supports your life…supports your ability to have a “travel writer’s lifestyle”…then…that should be the first work you do after waking up in the morning.
My wife and I typically have our writing schedule laid out one week in advance. We write for up to two hours every day as a practice. It works for us from a max productivity perspective. Plus, we know that when we are following our plan…we don’t have to worry about writing or working when we’re out playing!
April 5th, 2012 at 2:54 pm
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April 5th, 2012 at 3:40 pm
I’m about to embark on a 6 month drive around the US, and am using writing as an (eventual) way to earn an income. I’m worried about the schedule too – making the time, and making it a priority, to write.
I think it was Stephen King who said “it’s your job – do it first before anything else”.
So I’m now thinking that, regardless of schedules, finding the hours to write first thing in the morning is the only way this will work…
Thanks for the article (and the comments!).
April 5th, 2012 at 6:43 pm
@Doug, It sounds like a sensible scheme. On my drives I scribbled notes as they occurred to me on a yellow pad on the seat beside me as I hurtled down the highway, then in the evening brought the day together in my journal. While I wasn’t aiming at a publishable product, I suppose sleeping on the digested journal entries and writing the next morning would seem a good way to do it.
As we all know, the hardest part of writing is writing, and nothing helps like having a dedicated part of the day when all else has been forsworn.
One thing you might think about on the road is doing your morning writing in the local library. They’ll love to have a real author using their facilities and can probably give you stories and local leads. I was once directed down a back road to find an old guy living in a trailer by a carrot patch who would know all about something that I had asked after.
April 6th, 2012 at 1:39 am
Adam, it’s Marco Ferrarese who wrote the article, not Rolf Potts…
I think notes are essentials when you are out all day, And nowadays you can take notes on a smartphone, which saves you times on copying too. I always take with me both an ipod and a small paper notebook for this reason.
April 6th, 2012 at 4:12 am
While not paid, I used time on trains to open my laptop and log my days while traveling through Europe a couple of years ago. When I’m on my annual trips to India, mealtimes become the best moments for me to snag some time to get alone with my notebook and log important details and notes to return to when I have time to write them down properly.
April 6th, 2012 at 11:15 am
When I write on the road I tend to do it in large blocks of concentrated time. That is, instead of writing a little bit each night for two weeks, I’ll devote two entire days to writing. Of course, this applies mainly to longer, more detailed stories. When I was writing blog entries for my no-baggage trip in 2010 I was working nearly every day.
I don’t always write from the road, though. A lot of my longer stories were written weeks or even months after the experience. I find that different travel experiences lend themselves to different gestation times. I’m still trying to figure out how to write about my experience of walking across Israel 12 years ago.
@Chris: Vagabonding was written in one place in Thailand over the course of several months. Marco Polo Didn’t Go There was written from various places all over the world.
April 9th, 2012 at 4:37 pm
I find making the time to write (and, in my case edit photos too) while traveling is hard to justify. I feel inhibited by the pressure of the money I’ve spent to be in this new place, and also the likelihood that the trip is the only time I’ll get to experience where I am at that moment.
So, when recently relaunching my travel website, I’ve decided to travel first, and post on return. I take notes as I go, usually when waiting for food I’ve ordered, focusing on recording sensory details that are easy to lose the power of with time and distance.
One of the things I’ve noticed from this process already is that what may seem amazing or compelling while traveling can lose its drama and meaning with some emotional distance. I hope this is helping me write about what inspires more than what I feel momentarily compelled to vent about. This emotional distance may be a particular benefit for narrative travel writing, rather than blogging-style content.
April 11th, 2012 at 4:24 pm
I’ve never seriously tried to be a travel writer, although I would like to be one, as anybody here, I presume…
The only time I wrote about a journey was a few months later, following the notes jotted at that time.
April 11th, 2012 at 6:40 pm
If we want to write something worthwhile, something that will be worth reading years from now, we really ought to wait until we get home and can digest our experience. This can cause us to realize that what we thought exceptional at the time was really not that great, or more often in my own case to see experiences in a context that gives them a significance I didn’t see at the time.
The great travel writers took notes on the road, but wrote what we remember them for after they got home, and in some cases long after they got home. Patrick Leigh Fermor wrote what are likely the masterpieces of modern travel literature forty, plus, years after the fact.
Evelyn Waugh, a working journalist who sent dispatches home from Abyssinia, is not remembered for what he wrote when he was there, but what he wrote after he got back.