Something to hold in your hands...keeping a travel journal

One of my favourite books on journal writing is Sheila Bender's exquisite Keeping a Journal You Love. In it, she suggests that one of the reasons we should keep a travel journal is so that we can have "something to hold in your hands when you get back home."

Before you leave, you need to ask yourself – why am I really keeping this journal?

Do it now – spend a minute or so considering the possibilities. Are you keeping it purely for yourself? To record memories? For possible publication? For future reference and usefulness? For future generations?

The reasons why you are keeping it matter, and they change what you record and how you record it. Take this into account too.

And experience tells me that when you are travelling you won't just be using your journal to write in. It will become a de facto wallet, filled with tickets, brochures, pictures, cards and other things. Taking a tip from Lynne Perrella’s Artist’s Journals and Sketchbooks, I now paste en envelope into my journal before I go.

You can glue or tape one in.

It's good for newspaper clippings, extra notes you made on other things, cards, menus, fliers, receipts, leaves, tickets...well, it's just damn handy.

If you have talents in the visual arts area, do take a closer look at Lynne Perrella’s book – it is filled with useful ideas, even for non-artists like me.

Maybe you can bring a small stash of photocopied images of favoured spiritual figures and symbols? You can stick these into the journal when you visit associated sites to remind yourself more quickly when you review your journal. You might also use them as prompts for more spiritual and reflective writing, or as a guide for those times when you feel like getting grumpy and complain-ey.

Use them to mark out special work and to inspire new work and thoughts.

Quite often we might avoid writing in our journals because we fear our thoughts aren't profound enough, that we're not thinking big. Please don't let this get in your way. I am a big advocate of the beauty of the small. Observing the small and writing about it can lead you to some really big places.

 
The ego mind tricks us into thinking that what we do is not important and that we must always be doing something big.

We have to be working on the 100,000 word novel, the entire exhibition of paintings, the history of everyone who ever had the name “Chester” and on and on.

One of the most liberating things to realise creatively, and one that I think you will find all professionally creative people work with, is that we only ever have to concentrate on the small and the immediate.

I am working simply on a page, a paragraph, a sentence, a word.

For the time being I am bringing beauty to one line, one stitch, one pose.

I can forget about the end, about the editing, the choreography, the dramaturgy, the Booker Prize, the adoring fans leaving roses at my mausoleum.

This too extends to themes. I think that, at the heart of a lot of terrible art, is this idea that I must be writing only about Things That Matter.

But anything matters in the scheme of things, especially when we are travelling. Our minds are much more alert to the wonder of the everyday.

Any observation, any encounter, any shade of blue or curve of clay. Any piece of glass.

We create beauty, grandness, piece by piece. You can forget about your social duties just for a moment and just be in touch with what you need to do in that second. It will be beautiful and it will have meaning.

Travel Writing with Spirit - a wokshop with Walter Mason and Laneway Learning Sydney, August 4, 2015

In August I am so excited to be working with Laneway Learning Sydney teaching a travel writing workshop.

Please note that it is essential you book ahead for this workshop.

Details:

Travel Writing with Spirit

$14
Wednesday, August 5th
7:00pm to 8:15pm
Waverley Library
Register now
 

Please note:

We will have some fun colorful Archie Grand hardback notebooks for $8 at the venue, or choose ticket option 2

What’s it all about?

We are all travelling more and more, and we all ache to make something more meaningful of our experiences. To be able to write down our adventures in a way that is both entertaining and engaging moves us beyond the mere collection of sights and destinations. Get in touch with your spiritual side by turning your next holiday into something more transcendent: a soul journey. Learn how to be a special kind of travel writer, one who engages the heart as well as the head and seeks to make a greater understanding of the incredible insights and connections made during travel. Eat, pray, love and get it all written down – who knows where the journey might take you?

What will we cover?

    Thinking about your soul, not just your airline ticket

    How to begin to write with spirit about your experiences at home before you even head abroad

    The importance of journaling and the various tools you can use

    Beginner’s mind – cultivating a mood of awareness and allowing amazing things to happen to you

    Enriching your experience – what to look for when you write it all down and how to make it sing

Sampeah

I find myself writing about the sampeah quite a lot in my new book, because it is a gesture that fascinates me.

For those who don't know, the sampeah is the greeting gesture found throughout Southeast Asia where the greeter brings her/his hands up in a prayer position in front of the body. Most people know it from a holiday to Thailand, where the ubiquitous gesture manages to charm tourists and encourages them to emulate it, normally to bad effect.

For the sampeah is a complex and finely instrumented gseture, and it incorporates tiny and subtle differences that change depending on who is greeting and who is being greeted. To make matters worse, these differences can themselves change from region to region. It is such a potential minefield that, in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, I leave the gesture alone altogether, not wanting to offend unintentionally.

Poster instructs on the correct use of sampeah, Wat Phnom

Apparently the sampeah was once in common use in Vietnam, but these days it remains only as a greeting within the confines of Buddhist monasteries, where it has been hugely simplified into one basic gesture, the making of the palms together "prayer" sign at chest level, the head bowed slightly. Anyone can master this, and its use is second nature to me when I visit monks or hang out at monasteries in Vietnam.

But not so in Cambodia. The thumbs must face different parts of the upper body according to the status of the person you are greeting, and to get this detail wrong can cause serious offence. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen's wife recently caused an international scandal when she greeted President Obama with a sampeah intended for someone of lower status in what some say was a deliberate act.

Did Hun Sen's wife deliberately snub Obama with her sampeah?

The sampeah, too, has an unexpectedly traumatic history in Cambodia. Pol Pot banned its use during the Khmer Rouge years, identifying the status-conscious greeting as a remnant of feudal society. When I first went to Cambodia in 1996 I rarely saw the sampeah performed - people had simply fallen out of the habit, or had instructed their psyches to stop it during the years when doing it could get them killed. These days it is undergoing something or a comeback, and young people are taught the gesture and instructed to use it when greeting adults and monks. People in the 40 - 60 age bracket still seem to dispense with it, though.

Monday Blogcrawl

Cambodia has been much on my mind these past days. My dear friend, the artist Chhai Kakkada, opened his brand new exhibition last night at Siem Reap's hippest venue, The 1961. Here is some other interesting news from Cambodia over the past week:

Tuol Sleng Torture Museum, Phnom Penh

• Discovery of a new mass grave site at Do Dontrei brings back memories of the horrors of the Pol Pot years. And a reflection on visiting the torture museum Tuol Sleng - and another one. Brand new photographs of victims of the Khmer Rouge have surfaced and been donated, anonymously. Who on earth had them?
• Where to get Vietnamese Pho in Phnom Penh. 
• USA Today offers some tips on travelling solo in Siem Reap. And while you're there, why not do a cooking class at Le Tigre de Papier? And Words Fusion talks about how tourism is changing Siem Reap - why, you can even get yourself a High Tea there now. There is so much more to do besides visit Angkor Wat.
• Cambodia's Muslims are moving South.
• Lack of proper sanitation facilities is a major cause of child deaths in Cambodia. Asiancorrespondent.com comments on the financial and social costs of this.
• Let's hope the thoroughly adorable Mekong Dolphins are safe at last.
• The UN says we should be investing in Cambodian women.
• Nice to see good news stories coming out of modern Cambodia. Here is a successful young property developer, profiled in the Phnom Penh Post.
• A great video of Phnom Penh traffic. And apparently grilled seafood is getting popular in the capital - maybe you can get some of it at hip restaurant Malis, reviewed here in the Wall Street Journal.
• The owner of an independent radio station in Cambodia is in legal trouble, and LinkAsia reports on the complexities surrounding the case (video). And a reporter records the death earlier this year of environmental activist Chut Wutty, in Newsweek.
• Vietnamese & Cambodian women boost co-operation.
• Some time ago I reviewed Lost Loves, and now Hit Fix tells us it's Cambodia's entry in the foreign Oscars.
• A travel blog of a couple 'gone walkabout' in Cambodia.
• Social media, NGOs and social change in Cambodia.
• Getting things from one town to another has long been a headache in Cambodia, but the Phnom Penh Post reveals that rail freight services have begun again.
• Why not visit Sihanoukville?

7 Ways to Pursue Your Writing More Seriously

As a published writer I frequently get contacted by friends, acquaintances and total strangers asking me for advice on how to more seriously pursue a career in writing. While I love answering these people in-depth and giving them all kinds of tips and leads, I also thought it might be helpful if I distilled this advice for anyone to read and act on. So here are my 7 Ways to Pursue Your Writing More Seriously:

1. Enrol in a University writing course - This is controversial advice, as there are many people out there who will tell you that there is no need to do such a thing, that writing can't be taught etc. etc. Bunkum. Many of the most successful writers working today are the products of University-based creative writing courses. Even I, in my own modest way, can trace the trajectory of my professional writing career back to a University writing course. Ther are many reasons why such courses work: You are encouraged to think realistically about your writing and your market; you are placed in a competitive milieu which ratchets up your productivity, output and daring; and you have a lot of the really rough corners of your writing beaten out of you because of the constant criticism your writing is subjected to.
2. Join a Writers' Centre - Such centres exist in most states in Australia, and in some regional areas. Again, they build a sense of milieu, and they offer great courses which will help you to refine your craft. They also tend to produce excellent newsletters filled with good practical advice for all writers.
3. Sign up for a private writing course or workshop - These can be expensive, but they are so worth it. Just save your pennies and think of it as a holiday. The people who run these courses (and I think instantly of my great friend and mentor Jan Cornall) are dedicated, professional and in love with writing. They are also invariably interested in you and what you are writing - which can put them in a minority right at the beginning of your career.
4. Go away and write - If you are on a budget, then go off to a cabin or a monastery and spend some time with you and your paper. No internet connection is a plus. Spend time with yourself and your ideas about writing. This is not meant to be where you really get started on your masterpiece (though it might well turn into that). It's more of a time for you to think and write and get every single idea, hope and goal down on paper. Take a half dozen self-help books with you and do all the exercises. Re-imagine yourself as an interesting, creative being. If you have the money and the time, think about doing an organised writing retreat in somewhere like Bali or Phuket - these can often be cheaper than you would imagine. Quite successful and accomplished writers run such retreats, so watch their websites and keep an eye out.
5. Do The Artist's Way - Yeah, I know a lot of people will poo-pooh this suggestion, but the fact is that this amazing course in creativity has helped many very successful people to re-launch thier careers. Many places offer an organised Artist's Way Course and this would be even more of a plus.
6. Join a local writing group - This is separate to joining the bigger and better organised state writers' centres. Local groups can be chaotic, filled with every kind of eccentric. But I found my involvement to be immensely valuable in helping me to conceive of myself as a writer once more. And they can provide plenty of material for later stories.
7. Read, read, read - I am always bothered when people who don't read want to start writing. I'm gonna put my neck out here and say that there has never been a really good writer who wasn't also a voracious reader. I once went to hear British novelist Jeanette Winterson speak, and she said that universities should be offering creative reading workshops as well as creative writing workshops. If you are just launching yourself back into writing I would suggest you push your laptop aside for a month and do some solid reading. Read half a dozen or so books on writing; a few self-help and inspirational books; a few biographies of great writers; and at least the current Top 10 bestsellers in whatever genre you want to write in.

So there it is - my Top 7.
These tips are intended for people who have maybe put their writing aside for many years as they attended to a more sensible career.
I would love to hear from people with other tips, or more detailed information on the suggestions I have listed here.