Posted on Sun, Apr. 27, 2008

Get inspired for your journeys

Reading good travel writing is the perfect way to find inspiration for writing in your own journal on a trip. Here are some we love at the Star-Telegram:

From Catherine Mallette, assistant managing editor, features

Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain

It's like taking a steamship cruise around the world with Twain in 1897. He's a brave traveler, a great observer of details and very funny.

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

This nonfiction memoir takes you to Paris in the 1920s, as Hemingway explores the city and other parts of Europe (the Alps, Spain) with his wife, Hadley. For those of us who love celebrity sightings, he bumps into lots of notable figures, including Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and tells funny stories about his encounters with them.

From Kathy Harris, assistant managing editor, copy desks

London by Edward Rutherford

Rutherford intertwines fiction and fact to bring the history of this British city to life, a la James Michener. Warning: Don't start it a week before your trans-Atlantic flight. It's 800-plus pages.

From Robert Philpot, entertainment writer

A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins

It's actually in two parts (three if you include the decidedly Christian-leaning The Way West). Not exactly polished prose, but fascinating reading as Jenkins was an alienated college student in the early '70s who decided to walk across the country, taking jobs along the way to pay for his journey. The book that got me interested in travel literature.

Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon

The road-trip book, and less pompous than Heat-Moon's subsequent books. It's influential. Its forgotten counterpart is Uneasy Rider by Mike Bryan, a former Dallas Times Herald reporter who makes a pretty good case that American culture is on the interstates, not the back roads.

Road Fever by Tim Cahill

Cahill and a buddy drive from Tierra del Fuego to Alaska in 23 days. Not just a great travel book, a great book, period, and one of the funniest books I've ever read.

From Judy Wiley, travel editor

Travels With Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck

Steinbeck set out on this road trip in a camper with his standard poodle, Charley, to rediscover the U.S. in 1960. The relationship between Steinbeck and Charley is as entertaining as what they encounter on the road from New York to California and back, about 10,000 miles.

-- Compiled by Judy Wiley

Tips for keeping a travel journal

From Abroad, A Travel Organizer + Journal by Julianne Balmain

"A few thoughts and impressions go a long way. A friend of mine recently discovered a journal her mother kept during the '50s, when she was newly married and living in Morocco. Her brief descriptions and dashed-off accounts of what she did each day made for fascinating reading. Even her handwriting suggested details about her experience. A journal makes your trip last forever."

"Writing will come easily while you wait for a train, relax at lunch or kick back late at night. It can be as easy as jotting down the names of the islands the ferry passes on its way to your destination or the name and street of the cafe where they served a drink that tasted like honey. Simple details such as a movie title or song name may mean little while you're there, but once you are home the words will bring back memories."

Write down what you had for lunch. Paste in a ticket stub from a performance or museum and note what you saw, what you liked, what you did afterward.

"One day take quick notes. Next, compose carefully. Quote from books, plaques or statues, tourist brochures and bathroom walls. Record what you ate, saw, heard, smelled and felt (grass, fur, wood)." Write down what the taxi driver told you.

From En Route, A Journal and Touring Companion for Inspired Travelers by Barrie Kerper

On sketching: "When you take the time to draw or paint something, you truly examine it, and you see it in a completely different way than if you shot a photograph. When you really appreciate the details, you never look at landscapes, architecture or people in the same way again -- you see more than the average person who snaps a quick photo."

Before a journey, Kerper fills up at least half a journal with notes and clippings glued onto the pages. "The journal then becomes my main resource on a trip, eliminating the need for lots of other books. By the time my trip has ended, my journal is a complete record of everything I experienced, bulging with even more handwritten notes, paper ephemera, pressed flowers, wine labels, postcards, etc. ..."