Recycling

Recycling

Recycling a story is not unusual, it can be very satisfying revisiting a story written years ago, picking it apart, revamping it, even polishing it up to submit to a current writing competition. You might marvel as you go through your files and acknowledge how much you’ve actually written over the years or see how your writing has developed and changed with time.

            One story I found myself returning to was inspired by a journey I took in 2011 with three good friends. The four of us had recently retired from demanding jobs and decided to team up for an adventure. Leaving our partners at home, we flew to Los Angeles, hired an SUV, and drove up the West Coast of California, exploring as we went. We called our trip ‘On the Road’ and when we reached San Francisco, we visited the fabulous Beat Museum to learn more about Jack Kerouac and his friends.  

From San Francisco we took an Amtrak train across America to Chicago before moving on to meet a friend in New York. We were due to take the California Zephyr but as I recall this was rerouted because of floods and we ended up on the Southwest Chief to Chicago. This part of our adventure we called ‘Girl Guides on a Train’ because it felt like a camping trip at the time. On the Chicago to New York train we travelled alongside survivors and relatives affected by the awful Twin Tower attacks of Sept 2001. They were on their way to memorial events, honouring the 10 year anniversary and we stayed up all night listening to their tales, almost too harrowing to write about.

 It's the ‘On the Road’ section of our trip that's been at the heart of various pieces of writing ever since. The journey crops up in my novel ‘How They Met Themselves’ when two young men travel to California after their graduation. They take the Pacific Coast Highway and meet some extraordinary young women along the way. Both men later make appearances in ‘Lawn House Blues’ and one of them even plays a small part in ‘To Be Frank’. I became so fond of my characters I couldn’t leave them behind.

            It wasn't easy to let go of the Californian journey, so as well as a travel journal of my memories, I wrote a short story based on it for one of my writing groups. The story has been adapted and edited a number of times since and submitted to various competitions. At the fourth submission attempt, and now called ‘Crossings’, it was finally accepted for Robert Fear’s 2023 Anthology ‘15 Fascination Fictional Tales’, which is now available to purchase from Amazon. www.fd81.net. Perseverance got there in the end.  

            I suspect my memories of travelling through California have had their day now and it’s time I pull apart another old story or maybe take some new journeys.  

A Sense of Place 4 - 'Nets' by Philippa Hawley

Travel writing can be a short diversion or part of a long journey. The resulting pieces can be short or extended, resembling either flash fiction or a longer short story. Travelling may give rise to an article or even result in a book.

    For example, Bill Bryson, well known for his ‘Notes from a Small Island’, started off as a newspaper column writer, before writing ‘A Walk in the Woods’. This was about walking the Appalachian Trail with his friend and was, in 2015, made into a film. Another who used travel for inspiration was Chris Stewart, with ‘Driving over Lemons’, descibed as an optimist in Andalucia.

    As a student, one of the first travel writing books I became aware of was Eric Newby’s ‘A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush’. Written in 1958 this adventure, told with British humour, captured many a young person’s imagination over the following decades.

    Sometimes however our aims are less ambitious. It’s great to record our travels, and maybe use a diary to detail the sequence of events. Alongside that, it can be interesting to focus in on one small thing – a meal, a sight, or a character you met. This might ‘show’ the feelings you experienced while away from home, rather than ‘telling’ the reader every step you took. It might also keep your memories alive.

    This is the approach I took in entering a recent travel competition, which asked for a 50-100 word travel highlight. My 94 word piece called ‘Nets’ can be seen here. Re-reading it, I am immediately taken back to the beautiful Monte Isola, on Lake Iseo in Northern Italy. Have a look at the published story:

http://www.fd81.net/freds-blog/nets-by-philippa-hawley