5 Reasons Why Vacations Inspire Writing

I’m on vacation and as a writer, I believe vacations are an excellent resource for new ideas and to inspire creativity! Plus, you can write off the trip if you use it to work on your writing, yes? (I’m not an accountant, so don’t take my word on that…but it sounds like a good plan to me!)

I’d like to share 5 reasons why my vacations inspire my writing and I’d love to hear what you think—do they inspire yours?  How?

1. Car Talk– Even if I am going somewhere alone, I talk to myself in the car. It’s a great time to sort my thoughts out (aloud) on scenes or plot. And when traveling with my hubby, we end up having very interesting conversations that lead to “you know what would make a good story?” Yesterday, on the way here, hubby and I started talking about demons, mythology and the Church. As a paranormal writer, I speculated on things and came up with several story ideas and new thoughts I could use. My last trip was with my girlfriends (all writers) and we went on two ghost tours and talked the whole week about a story with 4 friends traveling!

2. New “Word Traps” This comes from Priscilla Long’s, The Writer’s Portable Mentor, and in the chapter, “Working with Words,” she says writers need to “make like Adam and put a name to it.”  Language that entices the reader is not accidental; neither is it tortured and twisted and wrung.

When a writer begins a new work, fiction or non-fiction, chapter or essay or scene, a word trap provides the means to deepen and augment the work. In Priscilla Long’s words, a word trap “is to collect words and phrases in a list that pertains to the piece you are currently working on….The words are out there. Time to bring them in.”

I learned to utilize this from McKenna in her Style workshops. She loves word traps because conventional received diction (i.e., words from television, newspapers, cereal boxes) are the language of belief rather than the language of sensory recorded experience.  And it’s the sensory our readers respond to. (If they want conventional diction, they’ll read cereal boxes, yes?)

I’m in Beaufort, where my hero and heroine have an intense scene on the beach. So while here and at the beach, I plan to gather some/thoughts/phrases words for beach.

3. Books—We like to rent cottages or cabins for our vacations and what do most places have? A bookcase. Full of unusual books. I’m sitting here looking at the bookcase in our cottage and I see the books: Basic Physics, The Mariners Dictionary and Handbook of Industrial Metrology! You never know when rummaging through a different type of book can give you that bit of fodder to use! Or, stop in a small bookstore (let’s help support them!) that has a lot of local interest books and browse!

4. New sensory and sights. This goes along with the word trap idea, but when in a new place, even if it’s a place you return to time and again, we have new sensory experiences. It smells different here, I see different fauna, the food is different, the weather is different, the locals are different. Different can pull us out of our usual way of describing something. We all see a sunset each day, but when it feels different, we can write about it differently.

5. Writer’s Groups.  I’m adding in this one because as I was sitting here typing this post, hubby walked in after a trip to the grocery store and said: “I found something for you to do tomorrow.” He folded up the local newspaper and handed it to me. The Beaufort writers are meeting tomorrow. He suggested that I go. Now, I’m assuming it’s a free-for-all-writers meeting, but it is always inspiring to meet new writers from other areas to see what they talk about! Plus, since we come here a lot, I use Beaufort in stories and it would be great to have a local contact for expert “place information”!

I know there are a LOT more than 5 reasons, so please share yours! Go visit the commentors blogs, have a great week and I hope you’ll hop over to my Paisley Goddess blog where I’ll be sharing more about Beaufort while here.