I have been working today on travel book based on a trip I took four years ago. I started it a couple of months ago, but hadn’t got past the first chapter. I have added another 2,000 words, using the extensive diary I kept while I was away to help, typing up the first entry and adding or deleting bits.
But it has been difficult. Writing about something that actually happened to me presents so many problems that I haven’t encountered before while writing fantasy fiction. My writing is normally so descriptive that I revel in creating people and places, tapping into my vast imagination and letting the words flow. Yet now, I feel a double pressure. First, I was never going to include all the little details in my diary that might just help bring it to life for an audience other than mysef. Just what did that businessman look like? What colour is the carpet in Gatwick departures at which I spent hours staring? On the other hand, I am all too aware that the reader could (or rather, will) be bored by too many details that I did record and find interesting, but ultimately aren’t. Do they really care what I ate for breakfast? Why do they need to know what time I got up?
Balance, is the key here. It’s one of those literary skills I have never been taught. I’m a whizz at semi colons. I can spot an incorrect apostrophe at a hundred yards. But no-one has ever helped me see just how much of my memory is enough. It’s a challenge, that’s for sure! I have never attempted anything like this before, having stuck to fiction as my genre. So it’s a learning curve while I write, which is hard for me. Words flow so quickly for me that having to stop and think all the time is exhausting.
Perhaps I need to buy some more travel books to read, to help me get into the flow. I already have all of Tony Hawks’, as well as Ted Simon, Ian McEwan/Charlie Boorman, Tim Moore and several others. Only one of them would be considered “bad” travel writing, which is a start, I suppose. It contains very little conversation with the people he met on his travels, so I am aware that I need to include this to break up the narrative.
This isn’t something I’ve ever had to say to myself before: “More reading is required!”
Dreaming of Writing... 