And while Jim is here at Terry's Place, I'm over at "The Old Silly" blog sharing a quick lesson on Transitions.
Welcome, Jim
I have just returned from a seven-day voyage to Alaska. I had originally planned to keep a journal or perhaps a diary so that I would remember events of the trip. I described the flight from Florida to Seattle (truly uneventful) and the marvelous experience of having dinner on the rotating restaurant on the Space Needle. After boarding the ship that was to carry us north, I set the journal aside and just enjoyed what I was witnessing. I do not intend to write “Murder on the Alaska Cruise.” Agatha did that about a train ride, and one’s enough. But I did give a lot of thought to the value of travel to writers. Somerset Maugham traveled for story material and came up with good stuff like “Rain.” Hemingway and Flaubert and Graham Greene, among flocks of others, made productive use of travel. Alternatively, the legendary editor Max Perkins discouraged a woman from traveling to Paris for atmosphere. “It’s better to use your imagination,” he said, or something like that.
So what do writers gain from travel?
