TRAVEL WRITING

Conspicuous by absence, instead of meeting with my fellow smockers on our weekly gatherings, I was due south, abroad from my home state. Writing was always in the forefront of my mind; but I was pre-occupied by the grueling 5 days of my first (and perhaps, at least for a long time to come) family vacation.

But since yesterday, as I successfully sent off my wife, her brother, and my in-laws back to New York, here I stay in the outskirts of Orland to handle some rather immediate business. And at 4pm, as those that are confined to the corporate world count down the last 60 minutes to their two-day, three-night freedom, I was able to concentrate, and get back to what I do best – write.

Today’s post is an ode to that downtime when you’re away, isolated instances where you can let your pen flow freely on a blank slate: Travel writing. It doesn’t have to be so formal as the name suggests. Hell, if you were at a park five minutes from your house, that’s still “away.” Sometimes, a break from the monotony, of your normal space of choice in writing can do you a whole lot of good.

Different venues that I’ve written sporadically this week was poolside in a backyard, soaking in a searing 90 degree Florida sun, the sands of Smyrna Beach, and on the back of a napkin while at Universal Studios in Orlando. What I love about travel writing is that you can look at your surroundings at an angle of 360 degrees and pick any object and just write – or at the very least have new ideas that may inspire you in the future.

Your surroundings especially if their new places and new experiences can be the basis of a new poem, a unique character in a future novel, or the backdrop of a short story. Case in point, travel writing, to me at least, is important. It breaks up the mundane, takes the ordinary and with words can be dressed to read extraordinarily, and is showcases the best part of writing – YOU CAN WRITE ANYWHERE!

Numero Uno Smocker,

Ralph

Postscript – WHERE’S YOUR FAVORITE PLACE TO WRITE?