In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Marlow reminisces about growing up looking at maps with blank spaces on them and saying to himself “when I grow up I want to go there.” I can imagine that young Marlow staring down at those white spaces, and I can remember a time when, for me, how imagination would have filled in whatever existed in those places no one had been. I remember wandering in woods and imagining that I was the first person who had seen a certain tree, or discovered a certain clearing. I’ve often imagined the first human kneeling in the dust and trying to convey to someone the route to the next watering hole, or the dying elder trying to pass on the way to the best hunting grounds. Was that what led to the creation of maps? Was that the beginning that led to how important maps are to us today?
And they are important.
Think about it: We have street maps and mall maps and star maps and shipping routes. We have maps of geography, of economies, of demographics and age. Heck, we even have mind maps. All of them serve a similar purpose in conveying relationships between political entities, between populations and between ideas.
But the thing that I find most fascinating is that maps have not always been as they are today. Maps were once an art form used to convey more that the ‘reality’ they are used to present today. Once maps were used to present ideas. For example, although today we all accept north as the cardinal ‘north’ on our maps, early Christian maps placed the east at the top because that was supposed to be the direction to paradise, while many early maps from other cultures also had the east at the top, presumably because that was where the sun rose.
We’ve all seen the old maps where beyond the boundaries of known lands the mapmaker filled the empty spaces with figures of their imaginations: dragons, unicorns and men with no heads or with a single foot so large it could provided shade. But other cultures have waxed more creative in looking at those empty spaces. In Peru the Inca read the future in the blank spaces between the mapped stars. Those same gaps and spaces, they mirrored in their fortresses of empire in the Andes.
So maps fascinate me and fuel my imagination and thus arose the Cartos people who populate my fantasy novels. With the help of their maps they can rewrite all creation and fill those blank spaces with something beyond even my imagination. Marlow would have loved them.
This past summer I had the ‘interesting’ experience of living like a writer. My day-job contracted work dried up and I basically had no work for July and August – except my writing. Nothing to do except sit in the sun, walk my cats (yes, on a leash), and the business of writing. Sounds like a lovely dream, doesn’t it? Yes, it was, but it also involved a heck of a lot more discipline and work than most people would have thought. And that’s why I’m writing this post because living like a writer isn’t just sitting staring out a window and typing when inspiration strikes, the business of being an independent writer requires deadlines and non-writing work and most of all, an awful lot of self talk. So what did my writing summer entail?
1. Setting Goals – I knew in June that my contract work was going on hiatus, so I spent some time planning. I also (thankfully) spent a wonderful few days at the Think Like a Publisher workshop put on by Dean Wesley Smith and William Scott Carter where I developed an even more detailed set of goals for my summer. The thing that was interesting for me, is that the plan wasn’t rocket science and yet I’d had a heck of a time setting as detailed a plan for myself. Critical to the goals was making sure there was time for both writing and the business of writing. Setting this plan was as simple as creating two columns on a piece of paper, one with the writing goals and one column for the business of writing goals. The writing goals came first, but just having all the goals written down gave me a sense of clarity and I could plan my months ahead easily.
2. Setting up a schedule- I’m used to this, because being self employed, if I don’t set up a schedule things like my writing will never get done. My summer writing schedule involved getting up every morning and writing for at least two hours and possibly more depending on what I was working on, or where I was in the project. The schedule also built in reading time, exercise, social time and the BUSINESS.
3. Learning the Technology – As I’ve ventured down the self-publishing road, I realized I needed to understand a lot more than how to structure a novel. I needed to know better how to format and publish books both in e- formats and also for print on demand. That meant learning how to use not only electronic publishing formats, but also how to use programs like InDesign and Photoshop with more ease.
4. Learning the Business – This involved delving into a number of different areas, from how to blog more effectively (still working on that), to how to connect with others on social media (yes, I finally started to use Twitter though I still don’t fully understand it), and marketing.
So now that September is here, it’s time to review how I did and what I learned:
I accomplished my writing goals for the summer which were to complete a novel started I started in June, as well as two novellas. (Unfortunately one of the novellas wants to grow up to become a novel, so back to the drawing board on that one.) What did I learn? That my proclivity to write long still haunts me, but I can still maintain a schedule of writing even when I’m also involved with the business. This was a revelation for me, as I have spent the last few years struggling to maintain my creativity while also keeping up with the soul-sucking process of traditional marketing.
I accomplished my business goals as well: I had three novels that I wanted to have e-published as well as three short stories. All of these have been published. As well I wanted to have one novel published in print on demand. I actually achieved more than this and managed to have three novels approved and available for POD.
I updated my websites and found better ways to display my books. I established direct sales bookstores for my print publications and went through the hassle of obtaining ISBNs from the Canadian Government for my print books. I arranged for the development of a specialty website to fit with a series of fantasy books I write.
All of this filled my days so that aside from an hour or so exercise every day, I really wasn’t laying around in the sun. Better for my skin anyway, I suppose.
But perhaps the biggest accomplishment this summer was learning what it takes to be a writer, both financially and mentally. Financially, it meant that my spending had to cut right back, because I didn’t want to dig too deep into my savings. Mentally it meant that I had to recognize the legitimacy of what I was doing. I was writing. I was in business. But you know what? Even knowing that I was working at something all day at least five days a week (and usually seven) I still experienced a strange phenomenon: Guilt.
Guilt that I could be doing something I loved so much, while everyone else still had to go to work. And I wasn’t on vacation! Now that it’s September and my contract work is back in full swing, I really would love to go back to dealing with that guilt again. Now to set goals for the winter (and hope my contract work dries up again next summer).
I wasn’t sure what I was going to write this blog about because I saw so little of the Lake Titicaca area, but perhaps that’s the point. Sometimes things get in the way of best intentions and we either can’t or just don’t get the job finished for whatever reason. This certainly happens in writing, when health or other life issues get in the way. So I guess this is my turn. Just in case anyone was worried, I seem to be fine. The high blood pressure meds seem to have done the trick and I am going to get checked out before the Machu Picchu climb. But that’s all fodder for a next post.
A village of the Isla Uros, Puno, Peru (2011) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson
Let me tell you about Puno.
Puno sits on the shore of Lake Titicaca, running up the sides of a number of hills that roll down to the great northwestern bay of the lake. My bus arrived in the night, so we crammed three of us (from the bus) into a shared taxi to get to our various hotels. All well and good, until we left the bus terminal and headed into the streets. Think narrow enough two cars can’t pass. Think congested with cars, trucks, motorcycle-taxis that they call ‘chilos’, as well as bicycle rickshaws. And pedestrians. Don’t forget the pedestrians. Masses of them, blithely passing between the vehicles. In the night everything smelled like car exhaust , and the air was glossy with mist off the lake. And pollution. OK, I thought: this seems rather Dante-esque, but it was night and I was tired and so I let it pass, because I’d seen worse in other countries.
The next day, the day I finally saw the doctor, I went out for a walk. Grotty was about the best I could describe it. Now maybe it was me – I was unstable enough on my feet I actually got lost twice – and I rarely get lost, but the city seemed in a perpetual state of being unfinished. Everywhere you looked there were brick buildings with iron poles sticking out of the roof awaiting the next story. Even my guest house, which was up-scale on the scale of guest houses I’ve been staying in, had its courtyard dug up and the front entrance perpetually stuck in a heap of dirt-cum-mud.
FishingSailboat on Lake Titicaca, (2011) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson
Not impressive, to say the least. Not a place you’d want to spend any more time than you had to, even though the streets were filled with delightful ladies in traditional bowler hats and absolutely everyone I had contact with was wonderful. My plans for Puno had been to use it as a base to do research farther afield. I had planned to go out to one of the islands in the lake and live there a few days, but given how I was feeling it seemed like a particularly stupid idea to put myself that far from a doctor.
One of the knitting old men of Isla Tranquile, Lake Titicaca, Peru (2011) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson
So instead I did what I never do: I booked into a – dare I say it – a tour. A one day tour out to Isla Tranquile. I figured there was no way they were going to stress me out, and I could at least see something of the lake.
Of course I was wrong.
A wonderful day – brisk wind, blue skies and the scent of wet mud you get from a marsh as we first visited the floating islands of Lake Titicaca. These are islands built of a layer of matted root and then heaped on top with reeds. Whole towns exist on these islands. And if you don’t like your neighbor, you just pull up your ten anchors and float away to Bolivia. Think about how easy ending a marriage would be!
From there we headed to Tranquile. I’m picturing a landing, a light walk and lunch. The real picture relates to the fact that Tranquile is basically a mountain. So we land, and I’m looking at an uphill climb. Way uphill. We have to reach the top for our lunch. And of course I’m carrying about 35 pounds of camera equipment that I will not leave unchaperoned on the boat.
Looking back own the flank of Isla Tanquile (2011) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson
At 14,000 feet this was not an easy hike, but the panting was worth it. Isla Tranquile sits in glacier-blue waters, its steep sides terraced with green, and laced with gold flowers. The sounds of birds and the call of children fill the air. The old men sit knitting (Tranquile is a UNESCO site for its fine fabric weaving and knitting) and its women constantly spin a weaving bobbin. You see them everywhere and they produce absolutely beautiful knit wear. The island is also famous for its gender roles. Men gain their worth by having a wife gift them with many handmade purses. The women cut their hair and weave it into a belt for their future husband. They also cut their hair to produce long falls that the men wear in ancient, Andean ceremonies. When you look at these faces, they have the same high cheek bones and hawk nose of the Incans and some say that Lake Titicaca is where The Inca – the first Inca – came from.
Which brings me back to Puno. I felt bad to leave the city without exploring it better. I climbed on the bus this morning feeling something of a failure, because I don’t like to leave things unfinished. Which is perhaps why Puno’s appearance that the whole place was under construction or reconstruction left me so unsettled.
But I learned from the guide on the bus that my perception was correct. Apparently the government of this department (state) only requires citizens to pay taxes on a finished house….
So I’m holding to that: Like the homeowners of Puno, sometimes in writing and travel it pays to leave things undone.
On the rooftop on the way to Isla Tanquile (2011)
Wiggle Room – the Chinese army and finding the time for a creative life
I’ve heard it said that if you want something done, ask the busiest person you know and they will accomplish it. Somehow these people have the ability to stretch a little more out of a minute or hour to get the conference planned, or the new report written. These people amaze me. Actually, I think they intimidate the heck out of me, because I am constantly finding myself scrambling trying to get things done and regretting my inability to say ‘no’ to new work. Of course, too much work impacts my ability to find time for my writing.
How do these people do it? Do they really have the magical ability to expand time?
Yak at Qinghai Lake (1998) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson
Of course the answer is ‘no’ (at least I don’t think too many of us have Hermoine’s magic watch), but these people have tricks that help them get things done. I figure I must have a few as well as I am frequently being asked where I find the time to write, or travel , or blog.
The first thing one must do is decide if writing or travel is something you really want to do. For me, there were years of frustration about finding the time to write and the time to market my writing until a friend and mentor made the suggestion that I treat myself as a one of my clients. You see, I work for myself as a consultant and I schedule my time based on the work a client has asked me to do. The suggestion was helpful to me because it did two things:
1. It got me to schedule time;
2. It legitimized my writing and got me to take it as seriously as I take my paying work.
The first of these points speaks to organization, a key point if you are trying to fit writing into your life. Along with organizing your life to allow writing time, you must obtain the buy-in from significant others like spouses and friends – otherwise expect writing time to be a constant source of relationship friction.
The second of these points is probably the most important. Taking my writing seriously gave me permission to make it a priority to write. I can’t tell you how many people I know who say they want to write a book or are working on a book and yet they never sit down to write. The first job of a writer is to write – not to talk about it. Not even to blog about it. But to write. Bum in chair folks, and no matter what else is going on in my life, I always find time to be there.
You have to decide the writing/travel/whatever is a priority because it will hurt you more not to do the activity, than to do it.
I’ve also had people tell me that part of their trouble is the challenge of moving from creative to mundane (e.g. work) projects and back again. This is an issue of multitasking. So how do people manage this shift from project to project?
I know people who work on two or three novel projects at the same time. I admire them greatly, but I don’t think I can do it. These folk can literally be writing one manuscript in the morning and another at night. For some it’s a matter of compartmentalizing their writing, so writing a certain type of book is associated with a certain time of day. I suppose I do something similar when I get up early in the morning and write creatively, and then turn to my work computer at eight a.m.
Having separate computers can help, as well. Having one computer for work and one that is strictly for creative endeavors allows your brain to associate a certain place with a certain type of thinking. Keeping your creative space separate from the internet has also helped some writers, and definitely removing all games from the creative computer. For me, I have to keep my photography on a separate computer because that is a time sink I frequently get stuck in, because it also feeds my creativity.
Other issues fledgling writers run into include knowing what to write and just getting started. I’ve talked previously about inspiration, but sometimes it’s just the fear of getting started. There are wonderful books out there that can help. I fondly recall Natalie Goldberg’s Wildmind, and the wonderful book The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Both helped me explore my voice and passions and taught me that my voice was valid. Books can teach you how to deal with the anxiety of starting through cleansing breaths, or meditation . Each writer has to find their own way to deal with the critics in their heads.
I’m reminded of a mantra Kris Rusch and Dean Smith put up at every workshop: DARE TO BE BAD. What this means is that all creativity (and travel, and just plain living, for that matter) is about taking a risk. We have to throw ourselves out there and only by taking those chances will something wonderful arise.
I’m reminded of one of my adventures: In China my travel companion and I decided to visit a remote area called Qinghai Lake. This is a wind-blown steppe in the mountains that has a huge lake that supports the massive migrations of waterfowl from Siberia to South Asia. So we hopped a local bus and travelled up into the mountains and were dumped off in a small group of buildings that were reminiscent of an old west town except there were no horses around, only yaks and monks.
Monks at Qinghai Lake (1998) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson
So we ventured out to the lake on foot (not an easy hike, because the lake was distant and the wind was high and scoured us constantly with dust). We were met by Tibetan women bringing their children to see Westerners. (I scared the children because I have blue eyes and apparently that’s not a good thing.) We saw massive stone cairns, strings of prayer flags, and wonderful kids who showed off by riding yaks to guard their herds and, in the distance, blue Qinghai Lake. I ended up going back to our room alone and was just washing the dust out of my pores when someone pounded on the door.
Soldiers.
They barged in on me as I stood there dripping. I was shocked, to say the least, and my first reaction was to shoo them right out of the room again and bar the door. It worked. I stood there, heart pounding. Through the door I heard them whispering and laughing. And they went away.
Which proved to me, that if I could deal with the Chinese Army, I could deal with most anything – including anything that dares get in the way of my writing.
Destructive Forces, or The Beauty of Making Things Worse
I’ve mentioned in previous posts about the destructive force of Ben and Shiva. Ben has his penchant for getting in behind breakable objects and purposefully shoving them off of shelves. (I have much less brick-a-brack these days.) Shiva has developed a penchant for shredding paper—cardboard—plastic. Anything he can sink his little teeth and claws into and I constantly am catching him at this lovely trick on things like – oh – my business license, or a manuscript stacked and ready to be mailed out.
I wonder if editors would understand a few chewed corners.
Hmm, maybe they would just figure I have mice, or was particularly nervous about mailing this one out?
Anyway, in the midst of trying to preserve my manuscripts and various and sundry pieces of memorabilia from my travels, I got to thinking about destruction and its place in our lives and writing. At the same time a writer friend of mine sent me a link to some fantastic photos of the erosion and destruction of Detroit . The photos are bizarrely science fictional and evoked thoughts of Night of the Living Dead, Twelve Monkeys and War of the Worlds, and yet they are absolutely and utterly beautiful with their haunting look at faded glories. Maybe it’s just me, (but I think not, given the hordes of other visitors to places like Angkor, and Athens and Machu Picchu) but I am fascinated not just by the vestiges of what was once great and has now been destroyed, but also in the cracks in the great edifices and the things climbing through from the other side. As I watch the people of Egypt struggle for democracy I think of new life, like the fromages tree that grow from the Angkor ruins (one is on my website home page). Or maybe it’s the wisdom and laughter that shines through from an age-ruined face.
Buddhist nun at Mingan, Mandalay, (1997) Photo (c) Karen Abraha
What does this have to do with writing?
A writer’s job is to make things worse and to recognize that destruction is life. This is hard, because even though I think we are attracted to destruction—fascinated by it, even, if you notice the way traffic slows next to a serious traffic accident—we hate to inflict it on other beings. We are fascinated and repulsed by news of a slaughter of others. Haiti’s earthquake, for example, or Hurricane Katrina, or the Tsunami that wiped out so many in Malaysia and Thailand. And yet as a writer our hands pause as we destroy our character’s beloved possession, or reputation. We hold back from hurting them physically or mentally. We take heed of the cardinal rule and DON’T kill their cat or the dog or the horse, but we don’t do other things to wound them either.
Which makes our writing boring.
Think about it. Are we interested in a character skipping happily through life? No. Even all those Jackie Collins novels of the beautiful people carry their own carnage. That’s what makes us read those novels and all those T.V. magazines: seeing the crumbling of those magnificent edifices of the cults of personality.
So it’s not just thrillers and action stories that should have destructive forces, whether they’re external or internal to our characters, we need them to ignite the passion in the reader and make them want to read on. The ‘oh-no’ moment. The tension of anticipation of when the lover finds out that they’ve been cheated on. The implications when a character finds their home, their family, their life (insert your character’s loss here) is gone. We want to know and we want to understand how character’s overcome, because we all have those forces in our lives and we want to see what comes after.
The difference is, in our writing (unlike all life situations), the edifices of the character’s old life may crumble or burn, but something lovely and fragile and – more – arises from the ashes. Like that fromages tree. Like the wisdom I see in those old eyes.
So get back to your destruction when you turn to your keyboard. I’m going to keep an eye on that chewed box in the corner to see what loveliness arises.
Living with two Bengal cats, I’m astounded by their boundless energy. These are two year old cats. They should be getting more sedentary, but I swear a hamster wheel would do them both good. The galloping of paws on my hardwood floors, and the boundless, easy leaps up to ceiling-high windows is enough to exhaust me after a day of work. I think cats keep a perfect writer’s schedule. They work when they want. They play when they want. They sleep when they want. And when they know they’re in trouble they can vanish like the wind before you can do anything about it, leaving you to deal with the aftermath. I wish I had their energy. Of course I also know cats who only get up for a trip to their food dish, and whose ankles groan every time they leap down from the couch.
Which is a lot like what can happen to writers when they’re not fit enough.
Keeping fit provides the energy to do amazing things like teach a cat to do tricks like the amazing temple cats of Inle Lake, Burma (1998) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson
It might not be leaping tall buildings, but writing is far more arduous than most people think. Physical ailments abound amidst writers: Carpal tunnel syndrome; bad backs; stiff necks and shoulders; not to mention the issue of midriff spare tires. All of which means that writers need to take care of themselves.
I’m a perfect example of someone who hasn’t always done so. I had my desk set up with the computer screen slightly off centre and ended up throwing out my back. I was immobilized with pain for six months (still writing using voice recognition software – now that was hilarious) before the Canadian Health Care system took pity and gave me a disc-ectomy. Thankfully the pain went away.
l spent a week at a writing retreat and turned out 50-70 pages a day. The result was carpal tunnel so badly that numbness ran from my hands right up to my biceps for about a week. Even now, three years later, typing any more than about 20 pages touches off the problems again.
Both of these issues were things I could have foreseen and both were issues I could have guarded against, but that’s the problem. Unless you are doing this a lot, many people don’t understand just how unnatural sitting in a chair is, and just how much repetitive stress our hands are under when we type.
So what do we need to do to keep going?
As professional writers, or even serious beginning writers, we first of all need to treat ourselves and our art seriously. To do this work we need the tools to do it. One things we can do is to set up our writing space properly, seated facing straight ahead, feet flat on the floor, with appropriate supports for our hands/wrists/arms and bac. Writers need to try out ergonomic keyboards, raised screens (that are directly in front of them), and appropriate chairs. Some people wear wrist supports, or small balls in their palms that help keep their hands in ergonomic positions. Remember, if you are aching when you are writing, or after you’ve written, something is wrong. You have to fix it if you are going to write long term.
The second action writers have to take is exactly that—action. Writers who believe that their only responsibility is to keep writing are mistaken. Yes, you need to keep writing, but you also need to keep fit to do it. As I said, sitting places stress on the body, and the fact that writing is sedentary means that old spare tire can easily seep in around our middles. The more weight you put on, the easier it is to remain sedentary. You’re more tired carrying that weight around. And so you don’t exercise and so you gain more weight.
This vicious cycle is one of the banes of my existence. As someone who still has to support themselves through a day job, the issue is exacerbated by the fatigue from the job that discourages those trips to the gym. The only defense a writer has is to take action. Drink water to keep hydrated while you write and that will, at least, force you out of your chair. Do isometric exercises at your desk or while you’re up taking care of that water. Best of all, take breaks and go out for a walk, a run, to the gym, kayak, play tennis, swim. Anything that will get your heart rate going.
This sort of activity not only gives your heart a workout, it also gets the endorphins pumping. You’ll find you are less tired and have more energy to devote to the writing—something a professional or the serious beginner needs to have.
If you can’t find the time for regular exercise, then try something like setting your writing space somewhere you have to walk up or down stairs to reach both the kitchen and bathroom. Then drink that water.
Or you can do things like I do to get myself fit: I set goals to hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. Or work up a sweat chasing after a couple of hoodlum cats that have just swiped my pen from the desk.
Dawn at Holy Amristar's Golden Temple (2000) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson
Reviewing my travel journals for excerpts in this site reminded me of facts I had long ago forgotten. Like the fact that Moroccans have a unique way of holding their hands when clapping, or the way my Mauritanian guide, Akbar, poured his mint tea by holding his red teapot at least three feet above the small juice glasses we drank from, or the way the Rajasthani women regarded my small gold earrings as symbols of an ancient royal family. Alone, these aren’t particularly earth-shattering bits of information, but in a story they provide unique bits of authenticity about a country that help establish a place for others.
To me these are the small bits of place – I call them the gifts – you can only gain by travelling. So how do you go about gaining these insights?
My basic philosophy is to travel open.
This speaks to being willing to be where you are:
1. Coming from our fast-paced culture it can be easy to set a schedule that keeps you moving on to new places all the time, rather than taking the time to get to know a place. When I traveled in India, for the first month I hired a car and driver to help get me to all the spread out places I wanted to go. They expected me to spend a day in each location. Instead I spent the time traveling around the state of Rajasthan, and only that, when the company I had hired the driver from had advised that the one-month period allowed most tourists to visit Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and one other state.
But the way I traveled I was able to spend two evenings as the sun went down, with a hotel owner and his friends as they played evening ragas (songs to the time of the day) on sitar and tabla on the rooftop terrace overlooking the lake of Udaipur. I was able to meet an Indian woman in an old fortress town and be invited home for dinner with her family. I was able to sit beside the pool at the golden temple of Amritsar and chat with young Punjabi women. On other trips I was able to stay an extra day and walk the long, pristine beaches of Zanzibar. Or decide at the last moment NOT to go to Beijing, but to return to the Tibetan highlands of Lamusa instead.
2. Traveling open also means not being consumed with your own needs all the time, and not being afraid. Some of the ugliest travelers I’ve seen are the people who won’t take the time to adhere to local customs. Like the tourists who won’t remove their shoes at a temple door. Or the tourist who complains vociferously about the native food not being like it is at home. Note to tourist: YOU ARE IN ANOTHER COUNTRY, HERE!
I once had a lovely Indian guesthouse hostess practically cry with pleasure when I said I would love to eat whatever her family was having. I was invited for dinner every night and had some of the best food I ate in India. She even took me into her kitchen and showed me her spices. As a result of being open to things like this I’ve been invited into Tibetan tents, and taught how to make chapti. I’ve sipped tea with retired Ministers of Culture who were trying to preserve their country’s ancient arts, and I’ve had a man in an empty Cairo street turn and give me flowers in welcome when my first inclination was to be afraid. All of this when I rarely spoke the language.
Traveling open means being willing to put aside your own schedule to take advantage of the many gifts along the way. Like the young woman at Burma’s Schwedigon Pagoda who told me her sad life tale that inspired a short story of mine.
Most of all, traveling open means traveling with a smile. That, and a writing notebook or computer, are the most important things you can pack when you travel. One gets you the memories and one helps you keep them. These are the gifts that fuel my writing.
I remember the time in China that I had sprained both my ankles: one sprained bracing myself on a horrific twelve hour train ride to Xi’an on the May 5th weekend, (For those of you who don’t know, the May 5th weekend is like July first and the entire Chinese population gets on trains, buses, planes and, for all I know, mules—and moves. ) and the second one sprained carrying a heavy pack on Xi’an’s uneven sidewalks. And then there was the time I was suffering from the early stages of pneumonia (unbeknownst to me) and had to carry a pack and camera equipment uphill from the train station to the Northern India, hill station town of Shimla. Both of these little episodes bring home one of the key lessons I have for travel.
Village woman- Sarahan, Spiti, India (2000) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson
Travel light. Which means you don’t take five suitcases on a cruise. Heck, you don’t take five suitcases anywhere! But travel light speaks to more than just baggage.
Travelling light means:
1. Travel alone or with only another person. Traveling in groups brings your culture with you and means you will be less likely to focus outside and away from your home culture. Some of the worst moments I’ve had while travelling have been sitting in the middle of the African veldt and having to listen to hard rock music courtesy of a group of campers who were so into their own world they couldn’t take the time to partake in the world they were in. At the same time, in most locations the fact that you are part of a group is likely to discourage local people from talking to you.
Traveling alone forces you to become a part of your surroundings to survive. You are forced to learn the language – or to stumble along without it. You are forced to seek local people for human companionship. If you settle in for a few days, this allows you and the people around you get used to each other. You know what I mean – it’s when you can actually start to make eye contact and people smile in recognition and it gives you the opportunity to really observe people and your surroundings.
2. Travel light also means keeping luggage to a minimum. Being keen on photography makes this a bit of a problem for me, because along with my personal effects, I also carry a fairly extensive camera bag. Praise for the digital age when I just have to carry memory cards and a digital storage device instead of fifty to a hundred rolls of film.
But traveling only with what you can comfortably carry yourself means that you can travel into unusual settings and more remote locations. It also means that you are not dependent upon traveling to resorts. So what do I travel with? Well my list is pretty basic:
• 3-4 pair of underwear
• 2-4 pairs of socks (depending on climate traveled to)
• 2 pair quick-drying trousers (one you wear, the other you pack)
• 2 t-shirts (one you wear, the other you pack)
• 1 long-sleeved shirt (and possibly 1 ‘nice’ shirt in case you want to splash out for an evening)
• 1 sweater or fleece
• 1 light wind and rain proof jacket
• First Aid kit
• Sewing kit
• Any medications/vitamins/toiletries etc. you think you might need (e.g. urinary tract infection mediation, dysentery medication, and don’t forget the moleskin for those pesky blisters on the feet.)
• Good quality walking sandals (Merrell, Teva) and/or hiking boots depending on the climate traveled to.
• Flashlight
• Pocket knife
• Book or two to read (or an e-reader)
• Note book or two with enough capacity to cover all the journaling you do during the trip – don’t underestimate – I’ve filled ten pages a day on a lot of trips. (or an e-notebook, but remember you often don’t have electricity) This is critical for writing about a place when I come back.
• Writing implements.
And of course camera equipment – always with more batteries and memory cards or film (if you still use it) than you think you’ll need.
Tibetan woman at festival, Lamusa, China (1998) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson
This is my packing list, and it may seem small to some of you. Actually it’s fairly extensive when I think of an artist friend of mine who took only a shoulder bag of personal supplies and a pocket sized sketching and water color paint kit. That lasted her three months. Believe me, it isn’t fun to lug around a lot of extra junk when you are hiking up a mountain. Take too much and you end up discarding the extras as you go.
Because carrying extra weight up hill both ways is never fun. Not with sprained ankles and not with pneumonia. Besides, taking too much with you means you have no room to bring the memories back home.
Sunshine and Chasing Your Tail, or Having Fun in the Muddled Middle
Each day as I sit down to write, my Bengal boys remind me with their antics that there is more to life than the driven work-ethic I seem to have inherited from my Victorian ancestors. (And that’s interesting given I’m Swedish and Polish. Hmm.) As I poise my fingers over the keyboard the two of them decide that it’s time to play.
I have one yelling at me from the floor or sitting on top of the back of my chair rubbing and purring into my ear. The other one (Shiva) manages to squeeze himself between my belly and the desk and knead my chest as he purrs. Of course, if that doesn’t get enough of my attention, then there is stealing thumb tacks off my corkboard (so I chase them before they swallow the darn tacks), or just being cute knocking things off shelves. Or, if there is a shadow, chasing their tails.
Fun all of it. And, if I take five minutes away from the dreaded manuscript, I have fun too, and go back to my manuscript refreshed and ready to play. Which brings me to my topic for this post, which is playing as you write.
I’ve mentioned previously how important it is to listen to your muse and not get caught up in the business of writing, but today I saw a video posted that reinforced something my mentors Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith have said again and again:
Go have fun.
The video presents how having fun encouraged the public to do something that previously they’d avoided doing – climbing the stairs. By making the stairwell into a musical keyboard, people’s behavior changed. So what does this mean for writers?
It means that when we hit one of those horrible twisted parts of a manuscript where we don’t want to sit down at our desk, we need to find the way to have fun again.
Some writers play tricks with themselves, timing themselves to see how many words they can get in the shortest time possible. Some of them reward themselves with chocolate. I prefer to think about the place where I first found the love of writing. I’ll turn on music and just write for fun, writing about the character, the situation, the emotion I want to evoke. I remember that writing is first and foremost for myself. If I’m not entertained, then no one else will be. And often this is enough to break me through.
Having fun means we regain our inner child, and stop telling ourselves we can’t say things this way or do things that way. I’ve been readying the manuscript of Judas Kiss . Reading it over, I was delighted to find I’d had so much fun writing it that the fun came through. I had fun characters, even though the situation I put them in was dire and that made me care about them.
So quit worrying as you write. Just write, have fun, and I’ll bet you’ll find that you get that manuscript moving again. And if you’ve had fun writing, maybe you’ll be ready for more — just like my Ben in the sunshine — still chasing his tail.
In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Marlow reminisces about growing up looking at maps with blank spaces on them and saying to himself “when I grow up I want to go there.” I can imagine that young Marlow staring down at those white spaces, and I can remember a time when, for me, how imagination would have filled in whatever existed in those places no one had been. I remember wandering in woods and imagining that I was the first person who had seen a certain tree, or discovered a certain clearing. I’ve often imagined the first human kneeling in the dust and trying to convey to someone the route to the next watering hole, or the dying elder trying to pass on the way to the best hunting grounds. Was that what led to the creation of maps? Was that the beginning that led to how important maps are to us today?
So maps fascinate me and fuel my imagination and thus arose the Cartos people who populate my fantasy novels. With the help of their maps they can rewrite all creation and fill those blank spaces with something beyond even my imagination. Marlow would have loved them.
