How to Travel Like a Writer

Alyssa Hollingsworth | April 8, 2016

2. Use Down-Time to Write

Cafe visits, trains and buses and planes, sunset-watching or pre-bed preparation — these are all great times to grab that journal and write. Catch up with the notes floating around your head.

When you’re out in public, describe everything. Look around and write the scene you see. Sure, you could just take a picture — but if you make yourself observe, process, and write, you’ll be surprised by how vivid a picture you can paint.

Watch for little moments. For me, it was the roses boys twined to their bicycle handlebars in Kabul. Or the way the bells shook the ground and echoed off far canals in Venice. Or the flower vendors tossing daffodils to passersby at the end of the day in Trier, Germany. These detailed, specific observations helped form my memory — and influenced my writing.

If you’re on a research trip or scoping out a setting you’d like to write about, branch into fiction. Put your characters in the place you’re sitting and follow them around. What does it smell like? What sounds do you hear?

Alyssa Hollingsworth / Own Work

Take the time to really be in the place you are.

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