Last week, we talked about learning other languages as an English writer. This week, it’s time to talk about traveling as a writer.
These are separate, but optionally related topics. You can, of course, travel anywhere you’d like without knowing another language. Will you encounter difficulties? Yes, absolutely. Can it still be done? Yes, with enough money, time, and/or determination.
I have been very lucky to have traveled fairly extensively considering I’ve only been around for three decades. (My mother and I have a competition, counting how many countries we’ve visited. She is, regrettably, winning.) Thanks to an Air Force brat upbringing, I’ve also traveled quite a bit around the continental US. I’ve lived in a lot of different places and seen a lot more.
There’s the famous saying “write what you know”. This is true on a lot of levels, but also bullshit on a few more. But there is no denying that travel is good for writers. You see new places, meet new people, experience new things. All of those are perfect for writing things you may not know!
You could go somewhere to research its culture, the history, the land, the people, the architecture, the food, the animals, and more. You could go somewhere and get inspired by any of those things to jump into something new, or add to an existing thought. Both are deliciously valid.
I’ve been to Paris several times (humble brag, yes, I know). One of my favorite side characters of my current series is a Parisian fox spirit. (Un matagot, if you’re looking for some mythology inspiration.) Before I went there, while there, I knew I wanted to write a short story about him bringing his American love interest to visit Paris. It’s referenced several times in-story and lives rent-free in my mind. What better inspiration than being in the city and absorbing it? (And inhaling as much mousse au chocolat as I can handle?)
On the train, I opened my phone to write, because even though I am a writer, I am a poor millennial first and foremost and like hell was I toting a laptop through international customs. (That is one thing I have yet to do. I dread doing it, despite that I’ve done it on several domestic flights.) I had inspiration around me, French food in my belly, and already had most of a story idea—way more than I usually have at my disposal when sitting down to write.
I wrote about three paragraphs.
To this day, I still haven’t finished that little story.
But you know what? I still imagined my characters with everything I got to experience. I imagined them getting lost and ending up at the Notre Dame by accident. I imagined them wandering through the Jardin du Luxembourg and laughing at the fat pigeons. I imagined what foods they’d like, what they wouldn’t, how snobby my Parisian character would be about wine, what the American may comment upon.
I have yet to write a word of any of that.
But it still informs me when I write these characters.
To be sure, actually writing is the best way to, well, write, and get better at it. But even putting words to paper can come out with flat, uninspired characters, if you don’t bother putting thought into them. You still have to think up their world and then dunk them into it.
And the best way to think up their world is to explore your world.
There is a lot to be said for intimate, years-long knowledge of a specific place. Stephen King is somewhat famous for shoving all of his stories in Maine, and they are authentically from there in a way a casual traveler would never be able to replicate.
But even a casual traveler will have more knowledge of a place than someone who jealously looks at Facebook pictures. Whether that sits with you as knowledge, or blooms into inspiration, it is not wasted. It should be sought out.
“Write what you know”—so travel, to know more!
