With my sun sign in Sagittarius, I love to travel and explore more of the world. As a writer, I find that travel opens up opportunities that I cannot find at home.
For example, last year I got to check off one of my “bucket list” items by going on a tour of Egypt. Ever since I took an elective course in archaeology while an undergrad, I wanted to go to Egypt. Not only did I get the chance to see the Great Pyramid, the Sphinx, and many other pyramids and temples, I got to ride in a hot air balloon in Luxor, Egypt.
That proved exhilarating as I stood with over twenty others and flew high above the Arabian desert and the Nile River. I rode a camel, briefly, down a sand dune, and got to bargain in the bazaars of Cairo and other cities.
Look ma, no hands! The camel ride which lasted about 10 minutes proved enough for me.
Great views from above the desert and the Nile at sunrise.
Lake Lugano borders Switzerland and Italy.
Glaciers flow off the mountain in Switzerland’s Alps
Recently, I got to hike a rather easy trail to an observatory to view the highest mountains in Europe in Switzerland on a tour which included seeing the Matterhorn, 14,478 meters high which makes it one of the highest summits in the Alps and in Europe and Jungfraujoch, 11,362 feet in the Bernese Alps in Switzerland.
I’m hoping to get the chance to check off another of my “bucket list” items with a photo safari in eastern Africa sometime next year. I started packing already.
Whenever I travel, I take notes about the tours, the events, and even the food. It’s not writing for story telling but for myself. I like to look back, sometimes, and remember those places I’ve been to. If I happen to give a story a foreign setting that I’ve been to, so much the better.
Where on Earth have you been? Are you writing about it?
When my son was a small boy, I enjoyed reading story books aloud to him, and I believe that he appreciated it. I also enjoyed listening to stories read aloud when I was a child. As a former educator, I often read aloud or had my students read aloud some of the stories we would later discuss in class. There is something about hearing the story read aloud that makes it come alive to a reader.
I recently adapted my novel, Sacred Fires, for audio book format. I used AI for narration on Google Play. It proved an interesting experience as I went through the text of my novel and had various voices for the different characters. It also reminded me of how when I am in the draft stage of a story, I feel as if the characters speak to me. Strange as that might sound to someone who doesn’t write fiction, it helps with creating a story.
When I taught writing, I had a student who mentioned that I told the class about characters speaking to the writer. At first she didn’t believe that until it happened to her as she wrote her own short story. What do the characters speak about? They might speak about the events, how they’re feeling, or give the dialogue.
Since I’ve been writing for quite awhile, and I have written and published a variety of books including young adult, paranormal romance, and historical romance, I’ve learned to tune into the characters as they speak.
So, it felt thrilling to use technology, AI, to assign various voices to the various characters in Sacred Fires. Hearing them made the story come alive, and it was a lot of fun. I’m hoping that book will appeal to those who enjoy hearing stories read aloud, or those who find it easier to listen to an audio book.
“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” – Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
While it’s necessary to have money, as a writer you don’t have to have a room of your own to write, but it helps! I recently converted a spare bedroom into my “writing room”, and it provides the space where I can go when I need to plot my stories, type drafts and revisions of works-in-progress, and meet on a Zoom with other writers. In a way, it’s become my “home office” as well as the guest room.
Since I sometimes like to listen to music while I write, I have an I-pod, a 33 rpm record player, downloads on my laptop and my phone. I’ve created playlists, too, for certain stories that I’m working on. Sometimes the music is background noise. I have a Mr. Coffee mug warmer which helps a lot when I need a cup o’ Joe to keep on keepin’ on. By the way, according to an article by Brooke Nelson in Reader’s Digest, dated November 24, 2022, the phrase cup of Joe might have its basis in linguistics. “Joe” is the simplified form of the word “jamoke,” which began as a nickname for coffee in the 19th century, a portmanteau of the coffee beans “Java,” and “mocha.” Therefore, “cup of jamoke” may have become shortened to a “cup of Joe.”
I’m a pencil and pen connoisseur and have included Blackwing pencils, dainty looking Vera Bradley pencils, gel pens of assorted colors, purple Pentel RSVP pens which are my favorites, and Bic Ball 3 in jade and blue. While I do most of my writing, as I am doing now, on my laptop, I enjoy using colorful pens and pencils for note taking, line editing, and filling out forms for writing. As for notebooks, there are so many types that I’ve used from those black and white composition books like the ones which I used in elementary school to ingrained, leather bound notebooks. I have notebooks with subject dividers for various tasks including journals, writing projects, writing workshops, research, and much more. Having been a teacher for over two decades, I had to be fairly organized and notebooks became a must. As a writer, even with the computer and the apps on my phone, I like to have notebooks.
These are tools which are useful for writing and for being in the room of my own, but the work must be done. Like a lot of other writers, my laptop is my most important tool. I knew a few writers when I started out writing more seriously who refused to type up their drafts and wrote long-hand. My first book, Wildflowers, is one which I wrote long-hand in a yellow 3-ring binder while commuting to my job as a copywriter for J.C. Penney in New York City. I wrote furiously as the bus meandered through the interstate traffic, through the Lincoln Tunnel, and deposited its passengers at the Port Authority Terminal of Manhattan. Those were before the invention of personal computers, even before the cell phones, so I am dating myself. Had it not been, though, for those notebooks and pens or pencils, I wouldn’t have had my earliest material for that book.
As for a room of one’s own as Virginia Woolf suggested in her book, A Room of One’s Own, it’s not necessary. I wrote on a bus, in a coffee shop, dictated on a tape recorder while driving my car, during my lunchtime breaks at work, even on long walks through parks. Once again, it’s the idea that to be a writer, one must write wherever and whenever one can.
So, where do you write? Do you need a “room of one’s own”? Comments are welcome.
