Writing – Page 13 – Mystery, fantasy and romance at the dangerous ends of the earth

For the Writer – Travel Light

By Karen Abrahamson | January 31, 2011

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

By Karen Abrahamson | January 29, 2011

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.

Kids at Sarahan, Indo-Chinese Border (2000) Photo (C) Karen Abrahamson — Kids at Sarahan, Spiti, Indo-Chinese Border (2000) Photo (C) Karen Abrahamson

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.

Choosing an Agent (Or why any agent may be the last thing you want)

By Karen Abrahamson | January 24, 2011

Okay, I’m headed off to Peru to climb the Inca Trail. The only problem is the Peruvian Government now only allows 500 people a day on the trail and ONLY if with a sanctioned guide. This is a problem. This means I must decide who is going to help me climb that mountain. Do I just go to a travel agent and have them book the trip? Do I just choose the first guide off the internet? Do I talk to one person and make a decision?

No. And no. And no. I want to plan my own trip, so first I have to decide what I want in an agent.

I’ve had this discussion many times with my parents who also like to travel. They like a travel agent who they can visit. They tell the agent generally what they want to do and the agent makes all the arrangements. Which means that the agent also makes all the decisions. Which has resulted in some pretty stupid oversights over the years – like my parents being stuck in veritable monsoons in Portugal unaware that their plane tickets gave them the privilege of escaping anywhere else in Europe at no cost. Or arriving for a second honeymoon in a beachfront hut in Tahiti, only to find that beach front and ocean view are two different things entirely. (They had a lovely view of the manure filled beach stables, however.)

So I tend to opt for taking a little more control in the travel situation.

For a trip of this nature I know there are plenty of agents to choose from. Go on-line and search Machu Picchu Tours and your search engine will indicate there’s 588,000 results. Not exactly how I want to spend my evenings. So I develop criteria. This is where you need to be self aware enough to know what you want. So my criteria are (in no particular order):

1. Experience delivering the service – how long have they been in business.

2. Client feedback

3. Local Peruvian connections

4. Size of group they usually take

5. Type of group they focus on

6. Knowledge of the area and culture

7. They speak English.

If you look at this list you are going to see a lot of similarity to considerations you should make when searching for a literary agent. If you want a literary agent (and this is an ‘if’ in this day and age. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about I direct you to a blog here).

So how long has a potential literary agent been in that line of work? Too long? Are they about to retire? Or are they young and hungry, but likely to drop out of the business when they find out how tough it is out there? You need to balance both these issues to find someone who might be appropriate to represent you. If you want an agent.

What are prior customers saying? Sure, you can depend on what the company posts, but look elsewhere as well. Editors and Predators, for writing, but also search for tour company recommendations.

For this trip I want a company that is locally based, instead of European or American. Yes, an American company may be well established, but does it give back to the local economy? Is it run environmentally and does it help the local people? A company with these sorts of links is also likely to meet my need for the guides to be culturally-based, because this is important to me. I want to hear what they think. I want to hear their stories and hear what they know about the environment I’m travelling in.

From a writer’s perspective considerations of this nature mean does the agent have New York connections? Sure the internet means anyone anywhere can make contact with New York editors, but if the agent is New York based, they are going to know the publishing culture – at least their part of it. (For more on this, see here, and read the comments as well)

Knowing who they usually serve as clients will help you know whether the tour group will fit you. I don’t want to travel the Inca trail with people who want to party all the way, but neither do I want to hike the trail with people who are going to complain it’s too hard. So I need to check the ages of people who travelled with a company. I need to check the photos on their websites.

With agents you need to know whether their model of agency works for you. Are they agents who provide editorial services, or are they agents who focus on sales. Your choice about what you prefer, but be clear about what it is you want and ask about it. (If you don’t understand, why, read that blog I mentioned.)

Size of group gets at whether I’ll be travelling with a group of 4-8 or a group of 17. Guess which size I’d rather travel with as an independent traveler? Smaller group means it might be a trifle harder, I might have to carry more, but it also means more opportunity to do what I want, instead of being dragged behind a larger group.

With an agent, it’s important to know how large their client list is and who their client list is. If they have a large list will they have time for you? If they have a NY Times best seller client, will they have time for you? Think about this. You shouldn’t need to have your hand held, but you should be able to get electronic correspondence from your agent in a timely fashion.

Lastly, I’ve listed English speaker. Why? Because I speak English and part of my reason for travel is to speak to people of another culture and learn. Yes, I should learn Spanish, but I won’t be fluent by the time I leave, so this is the next best option.

For an agent you need to be sure that you speak the same language. You need to be certain that you both have the same understanding of what you want from your agent—or not.

So I’m down to two possible companies to choose from. One is LlamaPath and the other is United Mice. Both fit my Peruvian criteria and both have been around for a few years. Both were professional and sent information to me quickly after I queried. Tonight I make the final decision and commit myself to my faithful guide.

But only because I have to have a guide.

Sustenance

By Karen Abrahamson | January 22, 2011

My two cats have very different eating habits. Ben (or Big Boy, as I call him) weighs fifteen pounds and will eat just about anything I put in front of him. Shiva (aka Little Man) weighs all of 11 pounds soaking wet and after a good meal. I worry about his weight because when you pick him up and he feels like he’s all bones and skin.

Kashgar morning, before market (1998) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson

For Shiva it has to be the right food, at the right temperature, at the right age out of the tin, and (I swear) out of the right part of tin, or he won’t eat it. These days it’s venison – yes, venison. Nothing but the best for Shiva, dear. He’s the one who, when given a bowl of kibble with a mixture of the kind he really likes and the kind he tolerates but needs to eat, will, of course, fish the favored kibble out of the bowl and then turn up his nose at the rest. Blasted cats.

Now, while this illustration is indicative of the types of personalities of these boys, it is also a wonderful metaphor for something important in writing, which is feeding ourselves. No, I’m not talking about how some writers can plough through a mountain of food, or how some writers who shall remain nameless will not eat anything green, or anything that has passed within ten miles of a vegetable. No, I am talking about feeding our souls.

The writer’s soul (aka the wily muse) is a creature that requires constant feeding of the kinds of things that make you want to write. For some it’s the anger at some injustice in the world. For some it’s the inspiration of music. For me, the inspiration is travel and other cultures.

I was just reminded by a friend that people might want to know more about my travels in other places, like western China or Northern India. Let me tell you about one such event. It involves food, or at least tea, and is the type of experience that feeds my writing.

Apothecary, Kashgar (1998) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson

When, in 1998, I visited Kashgar, the westernmost city of China and an ancient Silk Road caravanserai, the railway from eastern China had not yet been completed and so ancient Kashgar still remained relatively untouched, though the Chinese were moving in, in droves. At the time I befriended a Uigher gentleman (the local, Muslim, Turkic people) and my travelling companion and I spent time with him talking. One evening, after he had learned that I might be interested in a Uigher carpet, he invited my travelling companion and I back to his rooftop home.

When I say rooftop, I mean rooftop. He had a small mud shack at the side of the roof on the top of a flat-topped mud-daub house, and his ‘house’ had interior furnishings that were only bits of cardboard. The rooftop itself was pink adobe that apparently you could fall through during the infrequent rains the oasis town experienced. So there we were, the three of us sitting on his rooftop in the ancient town of Kashgar under a pink evening sky with the distant aspen golden on the hills leading up to the Karakoram pass of the Himalaya Mountains and the smell of bread baking and roasting goat’s heads wafting up from the street. So we sipped bitter tea and talked of the Uigher ‘situation’ (see my travel page on China) and I looked at his rugs. None were outstanding, but one charmed me and my Uigher friend told me how he was trying to earn enough money so that he could get married.

So I bought the rug. I handed over cold hard American cash and my address and the next morning I climbed on the bus to leave town with the foolish realization that I’d probably never see my cash or the rug again.

Imagine my surprise when six weeks later I arrived home and the rug had beaten me there.

The experience left me with a very soft spot for this Muslim man who proved so honest. It also fueled the feelings that led to the writing of Ashes and Light when I read about how the Chinese government used the 911 ‘Muslim crisis’ to round up and execute Uigher men when they rioted over the destructions of their homes.

So just as with Ben and Shiva there are different ways of feeding our souls and so, when the rest of life can suck us dry, we need to undertake those things that fill us up.

The memory of sitting on that rooftop, of my Uigher friend’s utter lack of anything the west would consider household belongings, but his total honesty in the face of being handed a fist-full of American dollars, touched me far more than music or other forms of inspiration ever will. It’s those cross cultural encounters that feed my soul and my muse.

And the fact that my friend may no longer be alive.