Travel and writing

[ljwrites]

I'm not much of a traveler. I am abroad right now but that was for work, and now that the conference where I was an organizer is done with I'm doing what I like best--chilling in my room (hotel in this case) with nothing urgent pressing down on me other than getting on a plane tomorrow and maybe doing some gift-shopping. It's not that travel is devoid of pleasure for me, I just don't actively seek it out and I dislike the exertion and uncertainty.

Travel has been a central subject of a lot of great literature, though, and it's sometihng I have a hard time grasping on an emotional level. Mostly I find myself thinking, wow, how dangerous and difficult. Why would anyone inflict all that hardship on themselevs? Sometimes I wonder if I'm missing out as a reader and writer by being so indifferent to the thrill of travel (or if there is a thrill, it's mainly that of fear that something will go wrong). Then again, many famed literary travels (Fellowship of the Ring, Grapes of Wrath) were compelled by circumstances so maybe I'm on to something here.

What's your personal relationship to travel? Do your travel experiences or lack thereof affect your writing? Can you think of some travels in literature, fiction or non-fiction, that have influenced you or seemed particularly good or bad?

Comments

[jae]

I travel a LOT. Mostly for work, like you, but also because there are places in the world that I have an emotional relationship with, and I need to maintain that relationship. I don't really do the kind of travel I think you're mostly talking about, which is more about Adventure and Seeing The World. I don't object to it, but I simply don't have time in my life for that, not after all my work travel and my "going back again and again to places where I feel at home" travel. I mean, I do also have a job. :)

My writerly relationship with travel is a very fraught one. I need to be at home in my own space in order to write, so this means that in periods when I'm travelling a lot, my writing always suffers. But having seen a lot of the world and at least to some degree learned a lot about (and in some cases actually internalized) cultures that are very different from the one I grew up in have enabled me to empathize more fully with people who are very different from me--and I think that makes me a better writer of the sort of psychological stories I try to write. I haven't figured out how to travel AND write, though. I wish I had a better handle on that.

-J

[ljwrites]

Relevant icon is relevant! That kind of travel--maintaining emotional connections with known places--would be a great subject for literature too.

I think traveling and writing is a difficult proposition a lot of the time, and possibly an unproductive one. After all, there are things that you can only experience at this other place, so focusing on those may be a better use of time. And, as you point out, the things one experiences in travel can directly help writing, too.