The Magic of Travel

BAY AREA BOOK FESTIVAL

I'll be speaking this Sunday at 1pm on banishing your inner editor with Chris Baty and Grant Faulkner at the East Bay Media Center in Berkeley. Info here. (Free! You should come!) 

CATCHING UP

There's so much to say and catch you up on, and I've hit that overwhelmed point at which I don't know HOW to catch you up on anything at all, and so, very happily, I'm letting that go. I'll give you a few highlights. 

I went to Edinburgh to write. 

Who gets to say that? I DO. *boggles and blinks*

Sometimes (more often than I ever would have thought) I get to say amazing wonderful sentences like that, and it feels--literally--magical. When I was a little girl, I'd dream about traveling the world, writing as I went. I didn't really think it would happen, though. Who thinks that? 

But now? I've written all over the world. While traveling, I like best to write in hotel breakfast rooms (after breakfast is done) because there's nothing interesting to look at and no one bothers you. The thing I've found, though, is usually I do much less writing that I hope to when I travel. I was on deadline during this last trip, and I did do quite a bit of writing. In Edinburgh, I was with four other writers, and we were there to write (we also wandered and ate and found castles, but mostly we were there to work). So we wrote. 

Lisa, Gigi, Em and I writing at the Elephant House, where Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book

 

But I had this one day slated as an all-day writing binge. It was on my schedule. It was my only full day in London, and I was by myself, and I had this romantic vision of myself moving slowly from cafe to cafe all day, working on my book as I went. 

Well. I woke up in London and thought to myself, SELF, YOU ARE IN LONDON. GO LOND. So I did. One never regrets wandering Camden Market, or people-watching, or finding a boat and just getting on it without knowing (or caring) where it was going after it cruised the canals (I hadn't even known London had canals! Or that the boat would let me off in Paddington! I was practically the bear!).

I could have worked on my book that day. But I didn't. 

Usually, when you're traveling, your environs are new and sparkly. They're fascinating. You want to watch, to participate, to wander. What you do not want to do is put your head down and go back into the world that you made up. You know that world intimately. You can visit that anytime. Go be where you are. Take that home with you. 

I've found the magic is in coming home. It's not something you have to really think about. You don't have to write up your findings and assimilate your new knowledge about Bloomsbury walkways into your everyday life. You don't have to suddenly write a book about a ruined castle or the fighting couple who ran the pub or the gorgeous French barista who sang along with the classical music in the cafe. You don't have to use any of those things at all. That stuff is just in you, and you'll use it when you need it. It'll be there. 

*Y'all, my packing was a thing of beauty. One half-sized carryon, one purse.I kept coming up with things (need a charger? Here's an extra! Clothesline, here you go!) and Lisa kept saying, "WHERE? WHERE DID YOU PACK THAT?" and there is nothing more satisfying for an obsessed underpacker to hear, ever.