Using Travel Experiences to Enrich Writing

Have you ever heard someone say, "Write what you know"? Have you ever felt discouraged after hearing someone say these words? People tell you to write what you know for good reason. How can you write about a world or describe an experience if you haven't lived it? I used to hear that sentence all the time, and I was also left feeling very frustrated. First, I had never been anywhere. Stories that I wanted to write that took place in the city seemed impossible to put on the page. I have always been drawn especially to writing fantasy, and how was I supposed to create worlds that I didn't know?

I was fortunate, however, because I've always loved watching movies and reading books. Doing so helped me build the imagination I needed to set to creating some really fun settings. 

But then I started traveling, and I realized I was missing some big opportunities with my writing. I could watch a movie and see the world surrounding a character. I could read a book and even get a little bit deeper into the experience through the descriptions I read. However, it was only when I started traveling - and really paying attention to my surroundings, that my descriptive writing and my world building really took off. 

Yes, I do also travel because I love going new places and doing new things. I take pictures because I want to hold on to the memories I made during my travels. The image above is a compilation of two photos I took on a recent trip to Seattle, Washington (the apartment building you see is located in downtown Seattle, and the background is actually a picture of some trees behind a raindrop speckled windshield, taken on our way to the beach). On our trip, I was able to take my son to the beach, and he experienced sand for the very first time. He loved it. I took so many photos of those kinds of moments, but I also took a lot of scenic photos - to remember where I was and what we were doing, for sure, but I now also have more tools in my toolbox for creating more realistic settings. 

When I travel, whether it be to new places or just on my regular walking route, I pay attention. I breathe in the scent of the air. I listen to the sound of the cars driving by, or the birds chirping in the trees, or the waves rolling over the rocks on the beach. I taste the food. I feel the sun on my skin, or the rain on my face, or the wind in my hair. All of these experiences get filed away into my memory - or my journal - and I can pull them out when I need to enrich my writing. 

Plus, pausing to have experiences like these has been tremendously helpful for my mental health and my relationships with those I experience these things with. 

Traveling is not the only way to add more to the bank of things you "know". Anything you experience can be saved and referred to in order to make your writing that much better. But I've found that my writing has exponentially improved through my traveling experiences. My novel Clairvoyance is set in a little town in Virginia, and actually going to little towns in Virginia allowed me to really visualize the setting I created. I spent a lot of time developing my world for my new book, Bound, and traveling to different places really helped me not only create more detailed, convincing settings, but also distinguish the ways people from different places act and speak in the story. 

I hope this post was helpful, and I hope that, whether you enjoy traveling or not, you pause more often to take in your surroundings and experiences a little more meaningfully. 

Thanks for reading! Check back next weekend for another writing-related post. Until then, write on!