Looking back, looking forward

Patrick Forsyth suggests a way of getting round the ‘no travel’ rules

ven though there is a gap between my writing these words and them appearing in print, I am currently assuming that there is no way travel will be back to normal before they appear. So in this column I am looking at how past travel experiences might be reused, whether you aim to use something now or you are stockpiling material for future times.

For example, the core journey of the first travel book I had published, First Class at Last!, was a journey from Singapore through Malaysia into Thailand on the very first class Eastern & Oriental train (run by Orient Express). One of the side trips I took on that journey was to Koh Phangan in Thailand where I did a scuba diving course and explored a reef off the island. Something about this appeared in the book and I think I also sold a couple of articles about it too, so it was time well spent – and great fun.

Now it seems to me that many of us have experiences that are both of sufficient interest and well retained in our memory such that they could be used again. Such events as I have described are also to a degree perennial – they do not date or become irrelevant. You can start this process by looking back to an event, or also to a place or a person. So maybe an original piece can be edited into something shorter, lengthened to make a longer feature or rewritten with a different focus and emphasis. I am pretty sure my diving experience could not be expanded into a whole book, but perhaps you have some experiences described first at article length that could. Check your memory, your files and have a think.

Reports about writing and the current Covid crisis vary. For a variety of reasons some people are finding it more difficult to write. Others have additional time to fill and can write more. If you are in the latter category then maybe it is a good time to look over your past travel experiences and writing and see what might give you the raw material for a future project. Maybe, too, it is a good time to experiment, perhaps by writing something longer than usual or actually using a brief experience or article as the springboard into a book.

Virtually all writers agree that it is all too easy to procrastinate. The present aim should surely be to continue writing, if possible to write more, and not let the current and ongoing difficulties curtail your output on a no travel = no writing basis. Try looking back and then looking forward.

E