Peg Herring's Blog - Posts Tagged "travel"

It's been done before, and I know why. Bloggers need topics, and a trip is an easy one. So for the next week or so, I'll tell you about my preparation, travel, and experiences relating to Malice Domestic in Washington, D.C.


Today is Planning What to Drag Along Day: clothes, books, and assorted miscellaneous items.

We'll begin with clothes. Here is my process. I think about the things I will be doing on the trip, and carefully lay out an outfit for each activity. Travel clothes will be comfortable but coordinated. Appearance clothes will be chosen to hide my figure flaws as much as possible. I always pack a black sweatsuit (which my son calls my Ninja suit) to wear around the hotel room. It's non-tight everywhere and modest enough that I could wear it to breakfast or down the hall for a bucket of ice. Then the extras get added: sweaters and/or jackets in case the weather turns cold, an extra, neutral colored top in case of an accidental stain on a planned outfit (it has happened before), and jewelry to match appropriate outfits.

Then it's on to shoes, my nemeses. After thirty years of standing/walking on concrete school floors, there is no such thing as a shoe I can comfortably wear all day, so I shoot for best available, knowing that at the conference I'll change halfway through the day to give my poor feet a break.

There. The clothing choosing is done, today's task complete. However, I know myself, as Socrates said I should. When I am actually on the road and it's too late to change my mind, I will hate every one of these outfits and ask myself why I made such stupid choices.

Except the Ninja suit. That I always like.

Day Two of Preparing for Malice Domestic: Now it's time to be sure I have all the non-clothing stuff covered.

I have packed bookmarks and books, business cards and copies of relevant documents. I have my passport (I know where D.C. is, but we may return through Canada, so there.) I have two suitcases: an on-the-road dufflebag and my official Malicewear suitcase. So what's left to do?

I need to make sure that my laptop has everything on it that I might need while I'm gone. I tend to forget to bring things like passwords and email addresses, and when I need to get into a site or contact someone, I can't. I know, there should be a file somewhere, and there probably is, but it won't be up to date and it won't be easy to find. Schedule that for this evening, while I watch the Tigers lose yet another game.

My panel is on the history of sleuthing, but I'm not the moderator, so I just have to discuss. That I can do. I should review the questions the moderator sent once more, though.

Then I have to make sure my S.O. can find things like cat litter and peanut butter, and I think I'm good to go!

Two days' driving, but it was beautiful all the way. Traffic was okay and the Garmin did the rest. (I love that thing!) So here I am at the Marriott, ready for Malice Domestic, wishing I could live like this for at least a month. Lots of people who love to talk about books, lots of fancy food and attentive hotel staff (if you tip well), and the chance to see old friends, make new friends, and see my heroes of the writing world.



Cool.

Are you Willie Nelson or Bob Dylan? Happy to hit the road or wishing you were Simon and Garfunkel, "Homeward Bound"?

I guess it depends on your reason for travel, and of course, your personality. I know people who never leave the town they were born in except for dire necessity, and I know people who keep a suitcase three-quarters packed in case someone suggests a trip. I tend more toward the latter, loving to see new places, but lately it's become a bit much. While I love meeting fans and talking about reading and writing, the travel tends to be repetitive. Motels are all the same, and a person can wake up disoriented, wondering if it's Boston or Buffalo. Restaurant meals have a sameness, too, and of course American cities have become in many ways carbon copies: so many cloverleafs, so many strip malls, so many access roads.

I guess what I need is a real trip, the kind where I see natural sights, visit unique city centers and picturesque countrysides. I think we used to call that a vacation.

Hotels always leave those little comment cards, asking what you liked and didn't like about your stay. Some send a follow-up email as well, apparently anxious to suck up so you'll return.

Like the conscientious soul I am, I try to help them out. "The remote needs batteries." "The toilet seat is wobbly." I figure these are things the maids would not typically notice, unless they are using the facilities or watching TV when they should be cleaning.

I have my own questions. "Why build a 100-unit motel and maintain it badly when you might have built a 50-unit place that you had a handle on?" "Why choose property between a strip club and a metal shop?" and for some of the more expensive ones, "Why does your desk staff seem to think that because they work in a pricey hotel, they, too, are of the upper crust?" My favorite for that type of hotel would be "Why can you rent me a room for $150.00 all weekend when I attend a conference and then jack the price up to $300.00 if I want to stay one more night? I mean, who are we kidding?"

The Fourth of July approaches, and with it, armies of fudgies, cone-lickers, and cabin critters, otherwise known as tourists.

I don't know what people in other parts of the nation or the world call those who come to visit, gawk, and enjoy their home territories, but here in Michigan, "fudgie" is the accepted term. It began on Mackinac Island, where fudge shops abound and every visitor seems destined to purchase a slab of sugary chocolate. Fudgie is not really an insult, although it can be. The people who work at the gas staions in my hometown laugh about fudgies who complain that they can't find our McDonalds. We have several families of McDonalds living in the area, but that's not what they mean. The answer is "We don't have one, but if you drive twenty miles due east, there's a town that does."

I once told a visitor that there is only one stoplight in our whole county. She froze in disbelief, a look one might call "the fudgie stare". It comes with the realization that they really, truly are removed from hospitals, movies, professional entertainment, box stores, 24-hour Rite-Aids, fast food, and sometimes cell phone and Internet connections. It's a culture shock they may have understood intellectually before arriving, but being unable to use one's iPad is another thing entirely.

In return, the fudgies sometimes call us cedar savages, picturing us holing up during the winter with a chain saw by the back door and jars of canned fish in the basement. Like most stereotypes, there's a grain of truth in both images. Fudgies do buy lots of fudge, ice cream, and silly tourist things like birch-bark notepads and pine cone coasters. And cedar savages do a lot of cutting and stacking wood so we'll be ready to get through the winter.

Not me, of course. I could keep warm for months just burning the multiple editions of my last manuscript.

I'm traveling, and I often talk to people along the way about being a writer. A motel clerk yesterday mentioned that she would like to write but claimed she doesn't have the patience for it. That got me thinking. What does it take--beside talent--to be a writer?

Patience is one thing, I suppose. It takes a long time and a lot of focus for a novel to get written. The idea for a novel, which everyone supposedly has in his head, doesn't just float onto paper or into a file. It's hard work to sit and make it happen, and a lot of the BITCH (butt in the chair, honey) is required.

I find that I need a chunk of semi-conscious think time. Driving or walking does it for me, but it works best if it's long-term. Car trips like the one I'm on are particularly valuable as I try out different scenarios, let my characters talk to me, and invent the antagonists who will make their lives difficult in the next book.

Ironically, I cannot write all that down on a road trip. I can make notes. I scribble on paper in the car (hubby drives, don't panic). I transfer those notes to the computer at night in whatever hotel room I inhabit. But I can't settle down and write. That takes extended time and a focused mindset.

I have friends who can write for an hour, even fifteen minutes on their lunch break. That isn't me.

After this trip, I plan to schedule several days of concentrated writing, putting everything I've been thinking about to work.

It's how I roll.

We arrived at Disney World yesterday, which is a bit of an ordeal in itself. We made it with the help of GPS navigation and lots of signs. The place is impressive, a shrine to Mickey and to money. Everything costs a little extra. It's done well, but one is best off if she doesn't think too much about the three-dollar drinks, fifteen dollar salads, and the extra fees for wi-fi, parking, and enforced baggage service. There is no way to economize, no place else to go, so put up and shut up.

That said, it is well done, and it's no worse than what a lot of large hotels do. In D.C. this spring I stayed at a hotel that charged extra for wi-fi in the room. One had to go down and sit in the lobby to connect or pay ten dollars more per day. The conference rate was around $150, but when I asked to stay over into the week, they quoted me a cost of $300+/day for a single room. Double?

A visitor to places that chisel money out of their guests in this way leaves me feeling, if not raped, at least molested. It seems to me that corporate at these places should be looking for ways to make guests feel pampered, not rooked. Maybe it is a small world after all--small minds seeing only profit rather than return trips from their guests.

Clever double meaning here. I'm traveling, actually for FUN this time. We're in Stratford, Ontario, and we saw two plays yesterday.
So we're on the road, and of course there is road work everywhere. It's summer. They have to get it done while they can. It's just so .......... SLOW!
The other meaning of road work is that I don't do much work when I'm on the road. Something just shuts off, and even though I open a file with good intent, it just sits there and looks at me.
I guess that slowness pervades everything.

Hubby and I traveled to the Mackinac Bridge this weekend. It's something we've seen lots of times before, but I found that as I reached the closing scenes of the second Dead Detective Mystery, I needed to look at the bridge with a new purpose. The book is already past the date that I gave my editor for submission, but I needed to answer some specific questions: can a person get from the water onto the bridge, would the bridge workers be aware of a pedestrian, and could she get up onto the bridge structure from the deck.

We examined the south end of the bridge carefully, taking notes from directly underneath, in the visitors' center, and from each side. We discussed how a climb could be made from the ground to the bridge deck. Then we drove across the bridge, as slowly as possible, much to the chagrin of others on the bridge. (There's no stopping, so we had to do what we could.) Now I'm guessing Homeland Security was aware of us by this time, but they probably concluded we were just another loony older couple, not a real threat.

I also needed to look at boats, so hubby took me to a marina when we got into the Upper Peninsula. Now we owned several boats in the past, but I was not really paying attention back then. I listened carefully as he told me the parts of several different boats, how the parts work, what they're used for, etc. As we talked, a man came along, looking at us rather oddly, and got onto the boat we were discussing. My clipboard and note-taking clearly made him nervous, so I explained what we were up to. His face lit like a candle, and he gladly told us all sorts of details. Later, we heard him telling other boaters that his vessel was going to be featured in a new mystery novel, DEAD FOR THE MONEY.

Research complete, we enjoyed our weekend in the U.P., wandering around Sault Ste. Marie as we talked over plot points and solved little knot-lets. Hubby seemed happy to be able to help, and I returned home with a new enthusiasm, ready to add details that will make the story resonate with readers.

I've already decided, however, that my next book will be set in Alaska, Italy, or maybe Australia. Somewhere I've always wanted to visit.