Write Your Travel Memoirs

Sarah White

Description

For every trip there's a story. Start writing yours. Write Your Travel Memoirs will help you get started and stay motivated. What's the secret to writing stories others will find compelling? After you read this book you'll know the answer. You'll also have an outline for your travel memoir and a solid plan for writing it. What's inside? Five how-to chapters, each with exercises to prepare you for writing your travel memoir. 1. The Outbound Journey: Why write, who for, and what to write about. 2. The Traveler and Companions: Bring people to life. 3. Settings; Where the Stories Live: Make places come alive like characters. 4. Staging the Action in Your Anecdotes: Give focus to your story and increase its drama. 5. Coming Home: Find the meaning in your travel memories. The book includes White's memoir example, 'Finding Our Place in Cinque Terre'.

Informations

• Publié par: First Person Productions
• Date de parution: 03 avril 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781912022236
• Langue: English

Extrait

Write Your Travel Memoirs
5 steps to transform your travel experiences into compelling essays
Sarah E. White

Copyright 2010 First Person Productions, Wisconsin.
Printed in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Print ISBN: 978-0-9844413-0-3
eBook ISBN: 978-1-9120222-3-6
Print edition: 2010
eBook edition: 2017
Library of Congress Control #2010921879
This book is available at special quantity discounts. The author is available for consulting, speaking, or teaching engagements. Please visit www.firstpersonprod.com for more information.
Cover and interior design: Sarah White Cover image: Ghetty Images
Acknowledgements
No one lives a life-or writes about it-alone. I d like to thank the House-Sitters, Cathy Fleming, Marilyn Gardner, Jane Kinney, Ray and Star Olderman, Michael Perry, James Rhem, Marg Sumner, Jerry Waxler, Story Circle Network and all my writing students, and above all, the Zajac family.
To those who have written and taught on memoir writing, whose work has influenced mine over the years, I offer my gratitude. Thank you for being my teacher.
There is one thing you need to know to enjoy the reading ahead. Cinque Terre, the name of the place my travel memoir is about, is pronounced CHEEN-quay TER-reh. The name refers to the five lands around the Italian villages that make up this region located between Genoa to the north and La Spezia to the south.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
What you ll find here
Chapter 1 The Outbound Journey
Why write about our travels?
Whom do we write for?
Truth or consequences
What do we intend to write about?
Assignment: Prepare an outline.
Chapter 2 The Traveler and Companions
Characterizing yourself
Details make the man (or woman)
Writing about living people
What we take with us
Assignment: Introduce your cast of characters
Chapter 3 Settings: Where the Stories Live
Drawing on the senses
Focus on one sense
What to include, what to leave out?
Musing or story-telling?
Your writer s voice: person, tense, and tone
Assignment: Write about places.
Chapter 4 Staging the Action in Your Anecdotes
Staging using story structure
Outline the action
Create images
Use the Power of Three structure
Use characters and settings for transitions
Use branching points for focus
Increase the intensity with conflict
Assignment: Finalize your outline.
Chapter 5 Coming Home
Dealing with the dark stuff
Writing to heal
Finding meaning
Finding universal themes
Sharing wisdom gained
Conclusion
Assignment: Write your travel memoir
Appendix I Resources for Travel Writers
Books on how to write about travel
Books on how to write, period
Good travel books to read
Online resources
Good travel writing examples
Publishing
Print-on-demand
Memoir writing
Appendix II Outline for Sarah White s Travel Memoir
Finding Our Place in Cinque Terre
a travel memoir by Sarah White
Chapter 1 The Gift
Chapter 2 Arrival in Cinque Terre: The Challenge of Inserimento
Chapter 3 Where Sneaker Meets Rock: The Vernazza-Corniglia Trail
Chapter 4 What to Do with Thirty Thousand Guests
Chapter 5 The Days Blur, the Faces Don t
Chapter 6 Return Inserimento
Epilogue
Introduction
You ve traveled, and you enjoy telling others about your trips-when they let you. But we all know a little of that goes a long way.
Plus, you want more. You want a sharper memory of the trip; a deeper understanding of how it affected you; a more compelling telling that makes others want to know more, not hurry you to anecdote s end. You want to write a travel memoir.
Writing a travel memoir is a spectacular opportunity to practice the craft of creative nonfiction writing, as well as to discover new perspectives on your life. When you have completed this five-lesson curriculum, you will have all the tools you need to write about your life as a traveler. And I hope you will have enjoyed the example memoir I ve written about a trip to Italy s Cinque Terre in Spring 2008.
What you ll find here
This book begins with five chapters of writing instruction. I conclude each chapter with an assignment for your writing practice.
In Chapter 1 , The Outbound Journey, I discuss why we write, whom we write for, and what we intend to write about.
With Chapter 2 , The Traveler and Companions, we explore how to bring to life the people in the story, and delve into the issues involved in writing about living people.
In Chapter 3 , Settings: Where the Stories Live, we examine techniques for making places come alive like characters.
In Chapter 4 , Staging the Action in Your Anecdotes, I offer you a simple structure of complications, developments, and resolutions to give focus to your story, and suggest techniques to increase the dramatic appeal of your story, if needed.
With Chapter 5 , Coming Home, I coach you to find the meaning in your travel memories.
Following these chapters, you ll find six chapters comprising my Cinque Terre travel memoir.
On page 39 following the lessons, you ll find several resources designed to help you continue your exploration of writing in the travel memoir genre.
I developed this curriculum for an online course I ve offered through Story Circle Network, a resource for women with stories to tell. I have also taught it in local groups, an outgrowth of my memoir workshops (which are general in focus rather than traveloriented).
In these workshops we explore different aspects of the writing craft. For each class meeting, students write a few pages on their life experiences. I suggest topics, but encourage participants to write on whatever motivates them. Each class meeting includes time to share what they ve written in a supportive environment. To enhance small-group interaction, enrollment is limited. Anyone age 14 to 114 is welcome to participate, and the more diverse the student group, the more interesting for everyone.
I hope you enjoy reading what I ve written, trying the exercises, and-best of all-living more fully with the memories of your travels preserved.
Sarah White
website: firstpersonprod.com
email: [e-mail]
Chapter 1
The Outbound Journey
My life as a traveler began with a family trip to Canada at age 6, when I realized my first-grade lessons in French actually allowed me to understand old men in a diner, when no one else in my family could. From the moment I understood Il fait beau ajourd hui that beautiful summer morning, I was hooked on the idea of travel- and the pleasures of language. A travel writer was born that day.
Let s begin our examination of writing a travel memoir with a look at intentions. Why do you want to write, whom do you want to write for, and what do you intend to write about?
Why write about our travels?
A traveler s story is just a long string of anecdotes, one damn thing after another. Why would anyone be interested? It takes a leap of faith to write about a trip, the why is so unclear. But here are a few ideas
We write for the practice, to build skill. Travel breaks the complexities of life down to their fundamentals: what to eat, where to sleep, what to do, whom to do it with. This makes travel experiences an ideal source of writable stories, grounded in universal experience.
We write to leave a record of our lives, a gift we can offer to our friends and family, sharing our experiences, our perspectives, our lessons learned. What we have to say about our travels reveals much about ourselves.
We write to sharpen memory, to preserve more of the trips we ve taken, to flesh out the record created by our photographs, travel journals, souvenirs.
We write for the satisfaction of self-exploration. Sometimes we don t know what we think, or feel, until we try expressing our thoughts in words. It can be a joy to work at finding meaning in our experiences.
Whom do we write for?
It s important to ask, because every time we choose words to express ourselves, we choose them with an audience in mind. When we write for children, we choose simple words, short sentences. When we write for publication, we research back issues to deduce the editors preferences.
Many people who write a memoir begin with their family as the intended audience. This affects every choice that follows, from the need for specificity (or lack of it, because everybody already knows) to the episodes omitted for tact or privacy. Internal censors are at work every step of the way. This holds true for the genre of travel memoir.
Your intended audience might be one of the following:
Self
Friends
Family
Strangers who share your interests
Publication (editors and the audience)
Now that I ve asked you to focus on audience, I m going to do an about-face. For your first draft, write for yourself alone. Don t allow an inner censor to get to work until you have had a chance to speak your own truth.
From the first draft on, writing is an act of reduction. The needs of the audience with whom you ll share the final work guide you as you decide what to cut or revise.
Give yourself the truest possible starting point. It will improve the work you shape from that first draft.
Truth or consequences
Truest. There it is-the question every memoirist faces. What is truth? Memory is an unreliable reporter. An unbridgeable distance lies between factual truth and emotional truth.
As a writer of non-fiction, a teller of tales drawn from lived experience, you hold your readers trust that what you say is true. The anecdotes really took place. The cathedral really stood where you say it did, the boat really did hit the iceberg, you really did see the boor pinch the tour guide s fanny.
The fact is, there is no more absolute