Journal With Impact: Travel Journey

“Thresholds are necessary in the creative process in giving an idea somewhere to go.”                                                                                                                   Tim Wynne-Jones

A portal can be considered a physical door, a road, latitude or longitude, and a heart change. We step through portals daily and cross threshold markers without even thinking about them. But when we plan a concrete travel journey we hope to be enlightened either emotionally, or visually, or mentally. We aim for at least one specific definitive destination. We choose to journey.

What is your dream journey?

A few weeks of complete solitude in nature: a river, an ocean, a forest? Climb a mountain? Trek a pilgrimage walk, or an historical excursion of your favorite author or artist or architect? Perhaps one season to follow a special musical tour or a beloved sports team.

Maybe a family heritage you would like to walk in order to honor or grieve their sacrifice. Trail the Underground Railroad or follow a pioneer path as a remembrance of their courage. Or each year visit a new country to build bridges across cultures.

Take a river cruise or language classes in another country? Or? The possibilities extend beyond our imaginations.

So where would you most like to travel?

Why?

What is the lure that draws you to that desire? Would you be willing to follow that dream regardless of how long it would take to fulfill?

These are the questions that help to focus on whether a particular journey is truly a potential reality or a nice daydream. Some heart decisions need to be understood so that the time and cost and effort are clear goals before you even take the first step.

Action Steps:

1.Take a small notebook that you can carry around and begin to ask yourself the basic questions: who, what, why, when, where, and how.

2. Don’t start with the logistics—start with the impulse of your dream. Apply these questions to understand what makes this important to you.

3. Are you willing to wait years or is there a time factor regarding age? What could other limitations be?

4. What reading and research might be necessary in order to have a clear idea of what you are seeking? Are you open to disappointments or unexpected information that could change your entire goal?

5. Journal out as many questions that you can think of to confirm this is your dream journey.

6. Then you start to outline your plan.

Share: What is your first step? How soon can you take it?

Read deep, marcy

Strategy # 4 Hungry Territory: Journey

Build Your Story: 8 Strategies for Writing Innovative Setting with Impact

Territory as Journey

In addition to the close-up possibilities we also need to step back and take an overview. Think in terms of a lens camera on zoom. We go from the tight shot to the distance shot.

A chef stands back a little to look at his masterpiece entrée. A quilter needs to move far back in order to see the whole when completed. One way to take a different angle view of territory can be as a journey regardless of distance.

We can turn to the rich history found in myths and their geography, which can be mined for today’s stories because their emotional truths still apply despite the change in civilizations. In his book, Realms of Gold, Leland Ryken comments on myth’s enduring qualities in one famous journey.

“During his wanderings, Odysseus encounters approximately what anyone taking a journey away from home would encounter today: violence, sexual temptation, drugs (the island of the lotus eaters), the occult, physical danger, death, lost luggage, homesickness, getting lost, culture shock (for example, the overnight in the Cyclops cave and the spectacle of Odysseus’ seeing his fellow sailors transformed into animals as he arrive at Circe’s house), hospitality, the impulse to give up, inadequate transportation, a lost passport (Odysseus arrives stark naked and without identity at Phaiacia), and personal conflict with fellow travelers.”

Sometimes we go on a journey and experience the unexpected. It can happen through our travel plans where nothing is as it should be, or was promised, or is even there anymore. It can happen in familiar territory like a walk around the block where suddenly we see an incident that impacts our lives and gives us an epiphany. We start off in one direction but when we come to the end we find we are different. The journey has changed us within. So regardless of genre, we almost have an internal radar to all journey stories, whether of quest or immigration or exile or discovery or mystery, and regardless of distance.

Share: What is your favorite childhood story that involved a journey? 

Read deep, marcy

Building a Story World

Journey

The rich history found in myths and their geography can be mined for today’s stories because their emotional truths still apply despite the change in civilizations. In his book, Realms of Gold, Leland Ryken comments on myth’s enduring qualities.

“During his wanderings, Odysseus encounters approximately what anyone taking a journey away from home would encounter today: violence, sexual temptation, drugs (the island of the lotus eaters), the occult, physical danger, death, lost luggage, homesickness, getting lost, culture shock (for example, the overnight in the Cyclops cave and the spectacle of Odysseus’ seeing his fellow sailors transformed into animals as he arrive at Circe’s house), hospitality, the impulse to give up, inadequate transportation, a lost passport (Odysseus arrives stark naked and without identity at Phaiacia), and personal conflict with fellow travelers.”

Sometimes we go on a journey and experience the unexpected. It can happen through our travel plans where nothing is as it should be, or was promised, or is even there anymore. (Wasn't there a comedy where a family arrived on a resort island and found a broken down house?)

And the unexpected can happen in familiar territory like a walk around the block where suddenly we see an incident that impacts our lives and gives us an epiphany. We start off in one direction but when we come to the end we find we are different. The journey has changed us within. So regardless of genre, we almost have an internal radar to all journey stories, whether of quest or immigration or exile or discovery or mystery, and regardless of distance.

Exercise in Process

1. Take a walk down a street in your childhood. Write down what you see, hear, remember. Write quickly a free write, broadly spaced. (about ten minutes)

2. Now go back through your notes and add specifics: sound, taste, and smell. For example, not just a swing on the front porch or in a yard, but what kind of swing. Metal-wooden-plastic/size/sounds it makes.

3. Choose one aspect of your walk—a particular setting or character and highlight either by enhanced detail, or exaggeration. Draw an analogy. For example:

“And the story goes she never forgave him. She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow.” Sandra Cisneros.

Share. Did some additional thoughts, feelings insights come with each layer?