How To Start Writing On Your Holiday

There is something about holidays that brings out the avid reader and often the prolific writer in those of us who are that way inclined. We are often disturbed by the everyday demands of our lives preventing us from this creative expression. On holidays we are not disturbed. Holidays require travel and day dreaming and gazing out of windows reflecting and pausing upon where we’ve been, where we are and where we thought we’d be. Often I’ve pondered how to be a writer on my trips away. I now think that writing on your holiday is often the place best place to start.

I love travel. While on holiday, I have written endless books that someone should have published by now in the form of poetry, journals, novels, lists; endless writing coupled with reading books like they will run out if I don’t get through the next three before the end of the day.

During a gorgeous week in 2010, I wrote 15,000 words of The Brightness of Stars from the very chair pictured below. That process definitely aided my journey into writing my first book Soul Journey. My writing confidence grew and dealing with emotional pain through the pen (the PC), I learnt was not unbearable.

So how can you best use holiday time for writing?

1. If you’re writing on an emotional or deeply personal level, holiday time is perfect. Lots of opportunities are there for resting as you process some of what is coming up in your writing. If you’re staying by the sea, it is a deeply healing space as you can connect deeply with the bigger picture. All the things that normally feel problematic and important disappear along with the waves.
2. Use your time travelling to and from your destination to day dream. Ponder all those things that can never have a beginning, a middle and an end because of life’s daily interruptions. I particularly enjoy train travel for this part of the process as the train gently moves me through the landscape I’m in.
3. Use a journal to chart your feelings about how this sense of freedom makes you feel.  Allow sensations and memories to be evoked by smells, thoughts, dreams and then journal them into paragraphs, word maps, words and pictures (Art Journaling); whatever feels natural to you.
4. Use this time to find your own authentic writing voice. Pick a place, a person found while people watching or a thing that is relevant to your holiday and start to write about it.
5. Thrive in your holiday mind set. Use the sense of freedom, spontaneity, creativity and a relaxed frame of mind to open up yourself to the process.

And remember, this is your time, your space and your story and by learning how to make the most of it for your writing, you will learn invaluable tools for engaging in writing when you are not in a place of happy, free and spontaneous with the sun beating down on your skin. I love running the Beginner Writers’ Workshops and maybe, just maybe, the sun will shine and we can tap into those feelings of freedom. Now go and daydream and be inspired….