I'm quite lucky to be able to work my manuscript while on vacations. For this blog, I will share some of my writing experiences while traveling.

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Inspiration that came while waiting at an airport

When traveling, one of my favourite things to write about is settings. In my previous blog on Choosing Settings, I wrote about visiting the settings in your story. Seeing the place through your characters’ eyes is an amazing experience.

Of course, the places we visit may also inspire the yet-to-be-written parts of our stories. Below is an excerpt from my manuscript inspired by extreme boredom while waiting for my four-hour-delayed flight at the airport:

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Airports are one of the most paradoxical places on earth. The Arrivals Hall featured shouts of joy and laughter, warm embraces, and tears of happiness. The Departures Hall featured desperate promises to stay in touch, tight embraces accompanied by silent pleas for time to stand still, and tearful farewells.
 

A hundred feet is approximately the length of an adult blue whale, two-thirds of an Olympic-sized swimming pool, or three school buses parked bumper to bumper. Until today, a hundred feet was the furthest distance that Davika and I had been physically apart.
…
 

I walked through the security checkpoint and I looked back at Davika. For the first time in my life, she was four school buses away from me. Then…
five school buses,
six school buses,
seven school buses,
eight school buses…

In case you’re curious as to which airline and airport it was, let’s just say the letters A, C, Y, Y, and Z are meaningful.
 

​My experiences during a road trip past a small town

The following is something I wrote after a road trip through a small town in Northern Ontario. I haven’t thought about how (or whether) to incorporate it in my manuscript, but I kinda’ like what I wrote:

My arrival in [town] resulted in a quarter percentage increase in the town's population and a fifty percent increase in its ethnic Chinese population. Like many small towns in northern Canada, the downtown area included a payday lender, a Tim Hortons coffee shop, a Chinese restaurant specializing in sweet and sour everything, and a massage parlor. The massage parlor featured familiar faces as the owner of the parlor also owned the payday loan business, and one of the regular masseuses worked at the Tim Hortons during the day.

In its heyday, the town was the site of one of the largest manufacturers of impregnated papers. Paper impregnation refers to the process of applying chemicals such as melamine resins to paper to produce water-resistant and durable decorative paper for subsequent production of particle boards and surface lamination.

“I used to work there, you know.” The Uber driver said in his vain attempt to break the ice, “I know what you’re thinking, but no, paper impregnation did not involve people fucking pieces of paper.” He laughed at his joke. I continued staring out the window. I didn’t bother to respond. I was in no mood for inane conversations.

After the impregnated paper factory closed down, the town’s main industry was the provision of washroom facilities for truckers. After pissing and shitting, the truck drivers perused the other town’s offerings and often left town with a cup of coffee, a stomach filled with sweet and sour stuff, a payday loan, and a deflated dick after getting a hand job and realizing how much of their next paycheck would go into covering the interest on their last payday loan.

 

Reading it now, I guess I wasn’t in a particularly good mood when I drove through that town…

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Pleasant surprise during my trip to New York

I was pleasantly surprised to see The Voyage of the Morning Light by my U of T instructor, Marina Endicott, during a trip to New York. 

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Final Thoughts
I’m very lucky to be able to experience writing in many different locations. Being away from familiar places and escaping from my normal routines have sparked new ideas and thoughts for my stories. If you have written during a vacation and would like to share your views, drop me a message.