Distractions

Apologies again for not writing for so long, but I've been up in Scotland (the Orkney Isles, specifically, very cool place) and haven't had internet access. Luckily for the blog (not so much for me), the last of my travels is coming up tomorrow. I spend a few days in Majorca in the Mediterranean (because, of course, I needed to research a warm water port for my book ;-p), and then I'm done! Which means frequent blogging and no more vacations for who knows how long while I restore my depleted bank account.

But my life story aside, I thought I'd take this time to discuss distractions, and how they can creep up on you without you noticing, especially while traveling.

This was a lesson learned during my 3-week sojourn to Europe, during which I had planned to learn all kinds of things from the various places I visited. Initially, I stuck pretty well to my plan. My journal from the first week or so is filled with little notes of things to include in my books. This, of course, was during the easiest part of my journey, while I was still well-rested and had local acquaintances to stay with and usher me around the various places I was visiting.

The second half of my trip, however, was strangely devoid of inspiration. I blame most of this on various distractions I ran into--everything from struggling to speak French all day to exhaustion to homesickness. Scotland was much the same way, I was either so busy or so exhausted from traveling all day the whole time that I didn't find much time to sit and ponder how I could use what I was seeing in my work, other than a few brief mental snapshots of the cold-water northern ports in the Orkneys (which were, naturally, invaluable).

So I guess my point is that, for me at any rate, these sort of travel distractions crept up on me by surprise, and I think because I wasn't prepared for them, or at any rate wasn't prepared to sacrifice the time and goodwill of my traveling companions necessary to properly combat them, I lost out on a lot of valuable inspiration. A thing to watch for, I guess, if you're traveling with the intent of picking up material for your writing.