Posted in Revision, Solas Travel Writing Awards, Writers' Groups, Writing Partners

3 Reasons to Join Writing Groups

Without the persistent support and serious critique of writing groups and partners throughout my writing career, starting in the early 1990s, I likely would not be a published author or had the success I’ve had to date. Groups and partners are necessary to the revision process of writing.

Let’s look at three reasons for getting feedback from other writers so we can revise with input and confidence.

Three Purposes of Receiving Feedback from Fellow Writers

ONE. Writing partners and groups offer support to the fragile souls of writers. Positive feedback is just as important as negative, if not more so. Partners and groups answering , “What do you like or what works for you as the reader?” lets the writer know what already enhances their piece.

Examples of feedback:

  • “The author’s work is paced so that it heightens the tension.”
  • “The audience is kept informed of details that keep the reader from stopping to ask ‘huh?’”
  • “The essay on forgiveness is a difficult and humbling topic, one needed in our public and private lives today. I commend the author for tackling the topic.”

TWO. Members of a writing group give brutally honest responses to another’s writing product — called constructive feedback. This gives the author a chance to listen and determine if the review feels on target or is deemed unimportant to their work.

Examples of feedback:

  • “The dialogue on pages 3-4 is clunky and extraneous and could be deleted without loss to the story.”
  • “The use of the adjective ‘really’ adds no value to a sentence, is overused, so can be eliminated throughout the story.”
  • “The sequence of events feels out of order. Perhaps placing the second event as the fourth will improve the logical occurrences of the scene.”

THREE. When a writer hears group members express what they are curious about or what they want more of in the story, it opens up possibilities. This often lets the writer find new scene-worthy material.

Examples of feedback:

  • “When the writer mentions rubies being found, is there a chance of other jewels being discovered in the treasure hunt?”
  • “As the author describes Hemingway’s life, what role do his four wives play in his literary career? ”
  • “When the protagonist fades from the scene, what is her emotional state? What physical ways can you show that?”

Writing Success through Publications and Awards

My most recent achievement was winning a bronze Solas travel writing award in “Elders” category for my story, “From the Back of the Van,” when traveling in Chiapas, Mexico with two friends.

My travel writing group is the backbone of my success. We take classes together and review each others’ work, going on about three years now. The group expands and contracts over time, but there are eight to fifteen of us, Zooming from San Diego to New York and all in between.

What’s remarkable is that ten of us placed in the Solas awards this year; last year, six of us. Solid proof that writing partners and groups work.

The Travelers’ Tales editors and this year’s guest judge Scott Dominic Carpenter announced the winners of the Seventeenth Annual Solas Awards for Best Travel Story of the Year on March 15, 2023. Scores of entries in 21 categories kept the judges busy. As usual, not every story that deserved an award received one. Here’s the complete list of winners. 

Winning stories will be posted on the Great Stories page and as Editors’ Choice stories on TravelersTales.com, and may appear in future Travelers’ Tales books. (Taken from the 17th Solas Awards Announcement page)

Travel is the Subject of my Two Books

Travel writing was not just aspirational, but a driving feature of my life and my work. At Home in the World: Travel Stories of Growing Up and Growing Away was my coming-of-age, travel memoir that follows me from a girl of ten to a young woman of twenty-seven. Travel experiences helped me grow up with a nuanced view of the world and a telling tale to gain self-confidence and agency as a result of my travels.

Novel writing grew from a dream one morning of a woman in a salwar kameez. It became the inspiration for Song of Myself, an historical novel, set in 1906 about a young horsewoman that traveled to India to sell her uncle’s quarter horses to the British Indian army for breeding.

Both book themes assert the transformative nature of building agency during travel, especially for women.

You can purchase each at Amazon as a paperback or an eBook.

Posted in Craft of writing

Join the Story Circle Network Class, “What Lurks Beneath: Finding the Emotional Current Beneath the Story Events”

Invitation to Join the Class

For my writing friends, this is an invitation to join me and others to write a personal essay (travel writing perhaps?), then search for the emotional currents that lurk just beneath the events of the story. Learning how to express the emotional beats or currents in your story (whether fiction or nonfiction) challenges most of us as writers.

Class Description in a Nutshell

This class will explore the uniqueness of travel writing and how to revise and edit your work for publication word count limitations. Once the personal essay is drafted then you will learn how to discover the emotional current or force of you story, where to add emotional content, and different ways to express an emotional beat, like peeling an onion.

Learn More Here

I’d enjoy having you join us. You will find the class summary and outline with dates and costs, along with how to register for the class on the Story Circle Network’s class website.

Posted in Craft of writing

Join the Story Circle Network Class, “What Lurks Beneath: Finding the Emotional Current Beneath the Story Events”

Invitation to Join the Class

For my writing friends, this is an invitation to join me and others to write a personal essay (travel writing perhaps?), then search for the emotional currents that lurk just beneath the events of the story. Learning how to express the emotional beats or currents in your story (whether fiction or nonfiction) challenges most of us as writers.

Class Description in a Nutshell

This class will explore the uniqueness of travel writing and how to revise and edit your work for publication word count limitations. Once the personal essay is drafted then you will learn how to discover the emotional current or force of you story, where to add emotional content, and different ways to express an emotional beat, like peeling an onion.

Learn More Here

Please join us. You will find the class summary and outline with dates and costs, along with how to register for the class on the Story Circle Network’s class website.

Posted in adventure, Daily travel meditations, Rolf Potts, Travel Writers, Travel Writing

The Vagabond’s Way by Rolf Potts

I don’t typically review books on my blog, but this is an exception. I studied travel writing with Rolf Potts through the Santa Fe Workshops in San Miguel de Allende in 2017. I learned a lot from him as he shared his vagabonding days and how to find a good story and then how to craft it into a finely honed travel story.

Potts latest book, The Vagabond’s Way: 366 Meditations on Wanderlust, Discover, and the Art of Travel. He had the pandemic-imposed two years to write this book, while landlocked in Kansas, his home.

The book offers his philosophy on travel, his encouragement to engage the world beyond our own backyard, rather than escape to our fenced or gated communities.

… travel is as much a way of being as it is an act of movement. — Rolf Potts

Potts organizes his book in themes that vaguely follow the hero’s journey: the chance to travel, the decision to take off, the preparation to make one’s way into the world, the experiences of awe and obstacles on the road, overcoming those unexpected obstacles, returning home with a new and extended sense of self.

I haven’t completed the book, of course, because the year has just started, but the sage guidance to encounter the world as we go by being open to our senses, to other people, to ourselves (no demanding advice to do it this way or that way) is his gentle way of sharing his own experience.

What makes our stomach churn with anxiety? What sends gleeful joy pulsing through our bodies? What unexpectedly delights our owns sense of self? These are the questions we should ask ourselves as we sojourn.

But I have started reading for January and already found much to mull, chew on, and consider for future travels. He quotes other writers on each day. Potts pulls from the writing of others to convey his thoughts about travel–from ancients such as Rilke and Seneca to modern-day philosophers such as Ryan Holiday and Maya Angelo. And then he slips in his own mighty perspective of how important travel is to the world and to ourselves.

Indeed, one of the reasons travel can lead to a sense of awakening is that leaving our home habits allows us to see things with eyes undimmed by familiarity. — Rolf Potts

Find a copy of the book to indulge your own need for wanderlust and adventure. When we discover the metaphors of travel and life, we often see they are inseparable. I’m sure you will enjoy Pott’s book.

Let me know what is one of your favorite travel books, recent or ancient.

My Debut Novel, Song of Herself

To read my debut novel, Song of Herself, an epic adventure to India by an Iowa horsewoman, click here.

Please, please, when done with the book, go to Amazon, BookBub, Goodreads, or your favorite reading app to leave a review of the book. I appreciate every assessment of the book for you the reader. It helps know if they are interested in the book. Thanks so very much!!!

Posted in adventure, Travel, Travel Writing

Let Travel Be Your Teacher

Study abroad experiences stretch college students’ horizons; mission trips help church teens see a world different from their own. We expect young people to learn from travel, but do we anticipate the same from ourselves when we travel?

We often say, “Yes,” but fail to do what it takes to make it happen. We may be a tourist, pilgrim, or adventurer. It doesn’t matter. Anyone can let travel be their teacher by setting an intention before leaving, paying attention to that intention, and seizing surprises along the way. When we capture our experiences in a journal, we can reflect on the insights gained. That’s where the learning takes place.

The only things that interest me are people and ideas. I love going on trips that shock me, where everything I believe in my religion, my politics, my social outlook is immediately challenged with diametrically different viewpoints. (Arthur Frommer)

Objection

A frequent objection is one misses travel experiences, while journaling. Early morning or late evening can offer quiet time to write. Or you can convert hours of transportation to useful writing. Using simple methods that don’t take much time is another answer.

Themes for your travel

A purposeful method of journaling is to choose a theme for the trip. You might select to focus on architecture, then create questions that go beyond the obvious.

  • What are traditional and contemporary construction methods and materials used? Why these?
  • What topographic, geological, or historical factors affected building structure design?
  • How are/were homes different from ours and for what reasons?
Journal when you have down-time.

These inquiries set in motion intentional travel that culminates in paying attention more closely while roaming the world. We experience the trip more deeply, and as a result, discover richer insights.

Choose from simple journaling techniques

  1. Categorize differences between the culture you’re visiting and your own
  2. Write about the most influential part of your day; recall one significant conversation, historical fact, or memorable event – not everything
  3. Create a “3D” table: Date, Destination, Discovery (what you learned in twenty-five words or less)
  4. Identify the 3E’s of daily travel: Event, Emotion, and what to Explore next
  5. Each day draft a short poem about something particular or a haiku (a 17-syllable poem)
  6. Ask others travelers to record memorable moments from their day in your journal
  7. List new foreign vocabulary words and their meaning
  8. Describe trees and plants, birds or animals new to you  

Artistic Journaling

Try artistic approaches. Collect items like tickets, coffee sleeves, or maps to paste into your journal—like a collage. Sketch a scene, a historical building, or unique road sign. Ask children you meet along the way draw or color in your journal. Create a mind map of the day’s activities.

Journaling Supplies

People, who journal, choose supplies to fit their personality and the circumstances of their trip. Do you prefer a ballpoint or gel pen, colored markers or pencils? Do you like a sketchpad, a spiral bound notebook with lines and a pretty cover, or a classic leather-bound journal? Will you be at the beach or in a rain forest? Waterproof paper and pencils are available; otherwise, a Ziploc bag will protect your supplies.

Mindful, intentional journal writing allows travel to serve as guide, mentor, and teacher.