The Next Journey — Teaching Travel Writing in Seattle
It had to happen eventually…
One of several hats I wear is Creative Writing Teacher (other ones are novelist, actor, playwright, audio-book narrator, fight choreographer… honestly, I should open a hat shop!). So it was inevitable that someday, someone, somewhere having heard me tell one of my (tall) traveller’s tales, would ask me to teach students ways to get them down. Which is why next week I am off to Seattle, to the Pacific Northwest Writers’ Conference, one of the oldest in North America, to teach a class on travel writing.
Of course, having agreed to do so, imposter syndrome immediately kicked in. Surely travel writers are people like Paul Theroux, Bill Bryson, Elizabeth Gilbert? Eminent sages who bring their fierce intellects and acute observational skills to bear on exotic locales and fascinating peoples? How dare lowly I aspire to even approach their sandbox, let alone climb in and start building castles?
Fortunately, I have had plenty of experience in dealing with that syndrome over the years. Indeed, while wearing every one of those career hats mentioned above, I have gone through it. Felt myself a bluffer as an actor, a novelist manqué. Awaited the touch upon my shoulder of the real practitioners who then speak the words: ‘You’re busted! Kindly leave the stage to the professionals.’ These days I still hear them but can more rapidly dismiss them. After all, I’ve been a reasonably successful actor for 45 years, have published 22 novels. And even though my ‘career’ as a travel writer has been of far shorter duration, I have been travelling widely, and writing about it for most of my life. Whilst I am also already a professional — defining professional here as being paid for my words. And that is thanks to the medium of Medium and especially my editor in Rome, Gianfranco Vigneri.
You are reading me here, so you already know all about Medium. I will be talking to my class about it for sure next week, as one way — there are others — to get your words on travel out into the world. Discovering Medium just prior to my trip last year gave me an opportunity to synthesize two of my greatest passions: writing and travelling. Gianfranco, by inviting me to write for his publication within Medium — Just To Talk About — gave me an outlet, an extra focus, and his keen editorial eye.
So I began writing travel essays last year on my three-month ramble around parts of Europe. Each essay was a self-contained snapshot of place and people — my observations, my experiences with them. Now nine months after my return, and having been set the task to teach, I have joyfully re-read them all to try and understand what I did so that I could then teach it.
Wow, what a time it was! So… varied! Yet what really strikes me are the continuities within them, the flow from essay to essay. The common denominator being, of course…
… Me.
This is not an ego-driven thing. It is the first truth. Travel essays must be personal to be true. Then like with any writing, be it fiction, plays, poetry, if it is indeed truly personal — i.e. arising from some truth of the person and their take on the world — then it must also be universal. The personal, the human, allows each reader to share it, even if the experiences are very different from anything they themselves have experienced.
Discovering this truth of travel writing led me to others. To consider its relationship to all the other things a ‘story’, any story, needs to contain to work for a reader. Here are a few I’ve hit upon — which will guide me as I try to teach the subject. (Some of them have links to the essays that inspired the thought):
VOICE. It’s a subject that is taught at every conference I’ve attended — and is remarkably hard to define (It’s one of those ‘you know it when you see it’ things). At its simplest, it is the ‘voice’ of the storyteller. Who is telling this story? Is the way they tell it angry, sarcastic, cynical? Is it poetic, impressionistic, euphoric? Voice makes people want to spend time with the writer. I’ve discovered that, in travel writing at least, my voice is curious, enthusiastic, and often humorous. I wrote one essay on the joys of bodysurfing which seems to encapsulate all that:
INTENTIONS/OBJECTIVES. What are you trying to achieve with this piece of writing? Educate? Amuse? Distract? The Golden Rule for me in any type of writing is this: keep the reader reading. That should always be your first intention. Writers are, at base, entertainers. Always a good thing to remember.
CHARACTER. This is connected to voice. But also speaks to a character’s objectives. What does this traveller seek in the travelling? Is there a goal beyond simple movement? Is there perhaps even a hero’s journey? My final essays focused more on family and ancestors, on the ‘secrets that whisper in the blood’ (Herman Hesse). On what, when we travel, we learn about ourselves.
PHILOSOPHY. If you are travelling for a while — I was on the road for three months — it is good to vary it up. My essays often have a guiding light at their centre, that voice, especially the curious one. Sometimes it’s good to reveal again the core of you, even if there’s a question in your heart. This story, really about freedom, illustrates that:
SERIOUSNESS. Entertainment takes many forms. And if travel writing is at its core about the traveller, varying the posts from week to week (one needs to write regularly) can be a good thing. Keep the reader guessing a little about what they are going to get this week. I was especially proud of this essay, because I was so moved by my experience in Guernica.
THE WHOLE JOURNEY. Though each essay one writes is a self-contained piece, it is also a part of a whole. A chapter, perhaps, in a book. So all the things one would use in a work of fiction can also be applied. The narrator is the constant, moving through place and time. Setting out with a goal, adapting it to event and circumstance. Is that goal achieved by the end? Maybe. Or maybe something more Zen-like has occurred — like accepting that the journey itself is the goal. Then some sort of circularity occurs. Returning to the starting point but changed. Leaving the reader with a sense of completion yet also with a question:
This journey is over. When does the next one begin?
Preview: Next February I fly to Antalya, Turkey… the starting point for something much, much bigger. Watch this space!
Chris (CC) Humphreys wears all the hats he mentions above. His new novel, ‘Someday I’ll Find You’ a war-love story partly based on his parents’ history is available now worldwide. Click:
