I've been reading this, and finding it very interesting.
She includes all sorts of useful travel info (it's never a bad idea to have a few copies of your passport photo, just in case), as well as bunches of info on keeping a journal, and myriad suggestions for making your travel experience (abroad or in your own neighborhood) deeper, broader, more interesting, and more fulfilling.
BE THERE, don't just go..........
She does have firm opinions about many things, some of which don't really matter and she should lighten up (she really thinks lined books are a bad thing). This is minor, but mildly annoying. And gratuitous. Next edit; fix. In my humble.
All in all, well worth reading. I just paged through it, as I have to return the library's copy.
I decided to buy my own.
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2 comments:
Years ago I tried to do a travel journal. Now I blog. But just looking through with the "surprise me" I see that there are things that would pertain even to a blogged journal. And it's available in a kindle edition.
I think Writing Away would be interesting to anyone who writes, or to anyone who travels. One of the things that is very important to her is doing things consciously, at home, too, and she does talk about ways to think about your familiar setting that will help it appear new and interesting.
It's been a couple of weeks since I read the whole book, but if I remember correctly, she's heavily prejudiced in favor of handwriting (as well as unlined journals! :-) ), but at least acknowledges that blogging can work.
There are all kinds of travel journals out there (produced by all kinds of different people). I especially love the ones that include sketches, ephemera, photographs (sometimes added later, after the traveler is home). She encourages putting ephemera into journals -- but apparently hasn't any of her own work on line. I looked, but didn't find it.
I'm still thinking of making a Blurb book for my 2010 trip to France....
I think she's correct that it's very important to write things down AT THE TIME. With the current sieve-like quality of my memory, I know that it's more likely that I will NOT remember something than that I will.....
In France I had a little spiral-bound notebook with me (in the fanny pack with the camera). I wrote down anything that I wanted to remember that wouldn't appear in pics.
Mostly, though, I could remember what I did and saw all day because I had the pics. Which, as I recall, is something else she's not all that big on.....
Taking pics helps me Look, and helps me concentrate on what I'm seeing, and helps me look up close, and farther away, and ... everything.
Some people apparently find that the camera gets in the way of really Looking, and those people think taking a million pics is bad...... And, maybe for them, it is, but for other people, it's the best thing.......
She's also heavily into making acquaintance with locals (and she's young, and did a lot of traveling while QUITE young, so you can imagine that I use the word "acquaintance" rather loosely)....
I go more because I want to experience the place than because I want to befriend the people who live there. THough, I guess, she'd argue that you can't *truly* experience the place without including the people............
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