Could be anywhere…

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When you’re living and working around the world – rather than holidaying for a year –  the highlight of some days is having a decent cup of coffee.

This is how yesterday, a Saturday in Edinburgh, went:

  • got up – tea and porridge for breakfast
  • checked social media, Amazon and Goodreads (unpaid author work) – more tea
  • started on an editorial project for my client (paid work) – more tea
  • realised most of the the morning had disappeared and we hadn’t left the house yet (Airbnb accommodation)
  • moved to a coffee shop where we had decent coffee
  • worked on the editorial project
  • had lunch at the cafe – while working
  • realised we’d been there for two hours and our butts hurt from the chairs
  • went to the supermarket and got fruit, TP, and stuff for dinner
  • at home, finished the editorial project
  • put on a couple of loads of laundry
  • realised it was five o’clock and opened a bottle of wine and watched Netflix
  • cooked and ate dinner – had more wine – watched more Netflix
  • went to bed

A normal day…

We could have been anywhere in the world…

We’re in one of the most beautiful cities in the world and yesterday we saw no more than our local neighbourhood, the inside of a Sainsbury’s and a busy cafe. But I don’t consider days like this a waste. They are a part of being nomads – and once in a while, we just need a day of normal.

And today? We’re off to climb Arthur’s Seat and to explore more of Old Town!

Traveller vs Tourist: Things that make you go, hmmm

I have long subscribed to being a traveller over being a tourist.

When I ran tours in Europe in the 90s, I’d start each one with the First Day Spiel. It took a couple of hours and ate up the time it took the coach to get from London to Dover. Much of it was around logistics – these were the days before (most people had) mobile phones and the Internet and the Euro. Travel in Europe was tricky at best and tetchy at worst. We changed money, we crossed actual borders, we used fax machines and phone cards. It was HARD.

But, I’d still finish my FDS with a little pontification about the value of being a traveller over being a tourist.

Travellers embrace differences – cultural, culinary, climate, cash. They are patient, observant, engaged and interested. They’ll understand when the Greek ferry is late and when the only thing to eat is day-old bread and iffy cheese. They will try to learn some of the local language, and will be equally thrilled to see locals zipping about Rome on Vespas as the Colosseum.

Tourists, on the other hand, should just stay home and watch Netflix – or perhaps the Travel Channel. They complain, whine, whinge and generally make life miserable for everyone around them.

For the most part, I had travellers on my tours – I am still friends with some of my former clients – but there were the odd tourists.

So, what category do I fit into this year? I have lived like a local, I have travelled, and I have visited family and friends. I’ve been a digital nomad and for most of the year have had my traveller hat pulled firmly over my brow. BUT, there have been a few tourist moments, when I have devolved into an ugly version of my travelling self – when it has all gotten a bit too much and I’ve indulged in a bit of a whinge.

Bali

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Campuhan Trail, Bali

Beach and pool clubs in Bali will try to rip you off when it comes to Happy Hour. It’s 2 for 1 drinks, right? Well, that means you get 4 drinks every time you order 2. So, when Ben and I would each order a cocktail, thinking that they were half-price, WRONG! 4 cocktails would show up and we’d be expected to pay for two (not one). It happened so many times, we started clarifying with staff what we were ordering and how much we’d be expected to pay – and even then, they’d still try to dupe us. We’d just send the drinks back – all 4 of them.

Ireland

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Cliffs of Kerry

I got sticker shock when I got to Ireland – and that was coming from England. Everything – and I mean everything – cost a lot more than what we’d typically pay in the US, the UK and Australia, especially public transport, food, drinks, coffee, groceries, accommodation and care hire – you know, basically everything.

I kept doing the conversions in my head – which travellers definitely don’t do – sending myself into the financial equivalent of a diabetic coma. A day-pass on public transit within the Dublin area capped out at 9 euros-something cents. The equivalent in London is 6 pounds-something pence – for London. By the way, that’s about 2 pounds cheaper to travel around London, one of the world’s largest and (I would argue) best cities.

England

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Prime Meridian, Greenwich

Ahhh, the land of inconvenience. That’s what my dad calls it and he’s English, so he’s allowed. As a half-English, half-American Aussie, I am also (technically) allowed to disparage the sometimes ridiculous inconveniences of England.

Going to the supermarket, for example, is an exercise in futility. Filling the basket or the cart is fine – there are a lot of choices – LOTS – but checking out is AWFUL. At ALDI – yes, the same discount box chain found all over the world – they won’t start scanning the items until you are fully unloaded, because there is literally nowhere to put them once they’re scanned. You must unload, then dash past the cashier with your bags at the ready, so you can catch your groceries as they fly off the conveyor belt. It’s like something out of a Japanese game show.

If this doesn’t appeal to you, try Tesco or Sainsbury’s or Waitrose, where you could gestate a brand new human being while you wait for the seated cashiers to slothenly (I’ve made up this word especially for them) pick up each item, examine it carefully to determine the whereabouts of the bar code, wave it over the scanner and then place it down with far more care than could possibly be required for a box of dishwasher tablets. They should have free WiFi so you can do your taxes while you wait.

The US

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Seattle

This probably won’t come as much of a surprise and I will risk getting slightly political, but entering trump’s America (note the on-purpose lack of proper noun capitalisation), is super NOT FUN for a non-American, especially one who is on sabbatical for a year, writes books, and doesn’t have a current employer.

I saw three immigration agents on the way into the US at LA. Three!

How long am I going to be here? 89 days (the visa waiver program allows 90 days and I am giving myself a day’s buffer). How did I get my employer to agree to let me travel for that long? I don’t have one. That’s when I was redirected to a supervisor.

So, how are you able to afford being here that long? I work for myself. Uh-oh. Back up the truck. Warning, Will Robinson. You’re working here???

That’s when I got to see the secure room where they take your phone off you.

Fortunately, the supervisor’s supervisor was a reasonable human being and he understood that a digital nomad is essentially self-funded, but may work for clients they have back home from time to time. I was released back into the wild that is LAX. 

New Zealand

Ben and Sandy 4

Nothing – it’s perfect. Duh.

Drama Queen: Becoming a Novelist

Since I can remember, I’ve loved writing. I still have my Year 4 composition book and I was quite the short storyist (I also like to make up words). In my teens I wrote a gripping satirical piece on public toilets and started a novel (to date, still unfinished).

At university, while studying a BA in English and majoring in Literature and Theatre Arts, I wrote piercing exposes about sexism in classic novels and the sexualisation of men in Glam Rock – I know, also gripping stuff. I wrote angst-ridden monologues, which were somewhat sophomoric considering I was in my early twenties and no longer a sulking teen.

I kept a journal from age twelve, one of those small, but fat diaries with a gold lock that my eight year-old sister could easily pick. I upgraded to bigger and better journals, but stopped journalling about fifteen years ago when I realised I spent more time writing about my life than living it.

All of these writings and musings are where I cut my teeth as an author, but the one thing that has served me best as an author is Drama – my time studying performance and plays, my time on stage, and my time as a Drama teacher.

Drama taught me invaluable lessons I draw on every time I write.

Character motivations

Characters must have a motivation. It’s that simple. They must want something, even if they don’t (yet) know that they want it. Characters can also be their own antagonist – just think of how many people you know who self-sabotage. Any time my writing stalls, I ask myself, what does this character want and what will they do to get it?

Character arcs

Not only do characters need a motivation, they must move – and I don’t mean that they need to join a dance class or change their address. Characters – particularly the protagonist – must develop, grow, or change in some way. They must have an arc. They should be different at the end of the story from when the reader first meets them. It’s good for me as a writer to be able to articulate that continuum of growth, that arc.

Back stories

Acting taught me of the importance of back stories. Characters – again, particularly protagonists – need to be as fully fleshed out as possible. They should have histories and there should be reasons for their personality traits, their motivations, their flaws, their relationships. As a writer, I must create histories for my characters, so they ring true to readers.

Setting

In a play, there’s a great deal of attention to setting – how characters interact with it, how it’s referred to and how it is staged. On paper, a richly-developed setting can become almost a character in itself. And how characters engage with the setting can evoke a specific tone or mood. As I travel avidly, I tend to write about places I know well and aim to capture what it is like to be in those places.

Dialogue

I have received some terrific feedback on the realism of my dialogue, which I greatly appreciate because I tend to use a lot of it and I work hard to make it sound A) true to each character and B) natural and realistic.

Writing plays in the noughties helped me develop this skill. I was teaching at a girls’ school and was seeking out plays for student productions. There’s a dearth of well-written, easy-to-stage ensemble pieces which are appropriate for high school students – especially for an all-female cast. So, I wrote plays. (They have since been published on Drama Notebook in the US and have been performed by schools in Australia, the UK and the US.)

I also hone this skill every time I work on one of my novels. Once I finish a conversation, I read it aloud as the characters (with voices – I can’t help myself), and tweak the phrasing, words, tone and inflections. My aim is to make it seem like a real conversation that I happened to capture in print.

Scenes

I follow a lot of authors on social media through Twitter, Facebook, blogs and websites, and I’ve been pleased to see more and more discussions about writing in scenes. Rather than focussing on chapters, the author focuses on a scene where something specific happens – just like in a play. A scene could comprise a whole chapter, or it might be part of one.

I realised recently that as a novelist I always write in scenes – again, perhaps a throw-back to writing plays. It is easier for me to approach the over-arching story in smaller, self-contained chunks. As a reader, I’ve seen a shift in writing towards this format. Likely you’ve seen this too – authors denote the end of a scene within a chapter with a double space or a physical page break that looks something like this:

***

Where I used to have to finish reading a whole chapter before putting a book down, I can now get to the end of a scene and feel like I have a natural place to pause.

A quick nod to grammar

I mentioned that I studied Literature as well as Theatre Arts and it was through my Lit classes that I began my love affair all things grammar. I have since taught English and worked as a professional editor. It means I can conduct decent and thorough editorial passes at my own writing before handing off to a(nother) pro (always get another pair of eyes on a manuscript).

And a quick nod to my contemporaries

A good writer reads. A good writer reads widely. A good writer reads voraciously.

Reading teaches you what to do and what not to do – how to evoke time, place, passion, fear, love, loss and the human condition – how to avoid over-using a word – how to structure a phrase, a sentence, a chapter, a thought – how to make your readers laugh aloud and weep onto the page – how to play with words and ignore the rules for effect.

I want to be a good writer – sorry, make that a great writer – so I read. Every day. Across genres. Indie authors, emerging authors, well established authors, and sometimes super famous authors.