Women Write Travel – some thoughts by Sybil Baker
Posted by Rosemary on Saturday, December 11, 2010 · 9 Comments
Guest Blog by Sybil Baker, the author of Talismans
(C&R Press) and The Life Plan(Casperian Books). Her short stories and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including upstreet and The Writer’s Chronicle. After living in South Korea for twelve years, she moved with her husband to Chattanooga, Tennessee. See www.sybilbaker.com for more information. She also writes for a women and writing blog – WOW
Like many people I know, I love to travel and I love to write; however, those two don’t necessarily have much in common.
When I’m traveling I’m not writing much. Instead I’m trying to enjoy the experience and process what is happening around me. I often make little journal entries when I’m traveling that only note where I was at and what I saw. For example, when I was on a travel safari in South Africa and Botswana, I wrote down all the animals and plants I’d seen and where, but little else. I was having too much fun talking to the other people on the trip or participating in activities.
Even though I’ve been to some pretty out of the way places like Mongolia, Zambia, and Burma, I don’t often write directly about my travels because they just aren’t that interesting. In my real life I’m just a traveler like anyone else, and so my particular story is not that different from any one else who has traveled to those places. What does happen though, is that the people, culture, and the scenery make an impression on me, and sometimes years later I use those places as settings for my fiction.
For example, in my book Talismans- In my comic novel The Life Plan
, Kat reluctantly follows her husband to Thailand in attempt to save her marriage. The setting of Thailand allowed me to push the dynamics of their marriage and Kat’s own comfort zones in a way I could not have if they’d never left Washington DC.
That doesn’t mean that as a writer you need to travel to far flung places—sometimes a new neighborhood or a drive out of the city into the country (or vice versa) is all you need to use your travels as a way to influence your writing.
The most important thing to remember is that if you want to be a writer, you need to write and if you want to travel, you should travel. Writing requires time in isolation and much reflection, while traveling requires for me to be involved with the people and culture around me. Enjoy your travels, take notes, and if they provide a spark for a story and an essay, by all means use your experiences to write a piece that takes the reader on a journey to a new and exciting place.
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- Whale-Watching in Kaikoura NZ - Experience of a Lifetime - April 30th, 2012
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thanks for the comment – I think it is possible, it is a different type of travelling – I enjoy it – more actively reflecting on the journey along the way, trying to make sense of it, sharing it with others.
I cannot se how an author can write whilst traveling because as you so rightly point out, it’s about assimilating and experiencing the people, culture, and the scenery. These are what makes the traveling memorable and then can later be used as settings for the writing, whatever the genre. Keep on traveling!
Rosemary, I think it’s great that you write down and capture your experience while you’re traveling–I think that’s a great way to engage with the local culture and reflect on your experience. Sometimes I don’t remember everything either, so it is great to write down what you’re seeing, hearing and smelling at that very instant. I don’t think that’s being removed from your culture or experience.–Sybil
yes I know what you think. I do like to write when I travel – to reflect on the experience. Sometimes I am accused by those I travel with of not entering fully into the experience when I am taking time out to write about it.
A bit like a photographer – forever being on the outside looking in rather than in the action. However that suits me. I can see how a different approach might work.
travel and write well….