The Secret Arts: Travel Journaling Review

“And the idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss.” (J.K. Rowling)

There’s little question in my mind that travel blogging on Word Press for the last five years has not been easy. Consider how I spend a typical night in our latest motel after a long drive or day trip adventure. I’d first managed to write down some superficial notes about the facts of what I’ve seen at a site and perhaps gathered some travel pamphlets at this destination of interest. I’d also taken a large amount of photographs to help me develop a topic to write about. Hopefully, the Wifi signal would be strong enough to access the Internet from our guest room, for I would likely spend extensive time on my I Pad doing research verification, source checks and accomplishing various grammar- spell check concerns then. With so much to prepare before sentence writing, time I would also feel pressure to finish the blog that night. For the longer I waited, the less clear my memory would serve me about what I’d actually seen. After last minute editing, it came time to finally “hit” the send button on Word Press.

But in my perfectionist manner, the process continued as I now turned my attention to reaching my intended audience consistently with this latest effort. So It came time next to interface my entry with my friends on Facebook and use the Anchor app’s free tool to create a podcast version of this writing. As I finally concluded my efforts for the night with a brief check of my early statistics of likes and comments accumulated, the process of publishing and marketing my blog uneventfully ended with relief within three-four hours time.

So where lies the fun in all this effort? For I can  vividly recall how I loved as a kid to draw, scribble, and color code my feelings in those simple diaries I wrote about girls, hobbies, and illness symptoms. I flashback as well to my undergraduate college days when taking notes during a professor’s lecture formulated as either an entertaining quiz show framework or an artistic mind map of creative design. At some point in graduate school, I also began to risk using some experimental ideas of Bette Edwards in her book, “Drawing on The Right Side of the Brain” such as creating art compositions while being blindfolded or visualizing images I wrote about by turning a book page upside down. Learn about these techniques below for yourself in the video link below.

https://youtu.be/cOh4eIEjqvY

But there’s some good news to “calm the waters” of my current blog writing toil as a result of my participation in a “Zoom” Webinar recently watched on Atlas Obscura titled “The Secret Arts: Travel Journaling” For this two hour demonstration of several, beautifully designed travel journals by Spanish artist, Jose Naranja seemed to restore my interest in making my Word Press efforts more fun to create. How motivating  it appeared to me then in knowing I could find total creative freedom by filling each page of a personal travel journal in a simple paper notebook with spontaneous expressions of words, images, and personal feelings during such present moments of travel. By recording such waves of thought in a variety of expressive ways for myself at the time of each visit, I also envisioned that my Word Press blogs would be accomplished with less memory loss and thus be energized with fresh newness about what I’d seen. My obsession to correct my mistakes in writing might also be avoided I thought as this free flow spirit of experimentation settled more into my mind.

Would I save time in undergoing this writing transformation? How easily could this former English professor so heavily invested in his academic mindset “let go” of his penchant for correcting himself at every turn? Who knows for now! What about you? Would you be willing to put your creative talents to the test in this way? I invite you to check out the following photos display and Jose Naranja’s presentation below showcasing his inspiring travel writing effort. It will be available on Zoom for the next week only.

Link Resource: (Click Link Below)

https://us06web.zoom.us/rec/play/Q2agFdN4QIvnPoK3Wfat9Lk80BessJbj4zChshuGK46lXur_N_4B2TyA5_PI-wdzBziqlQ5-ViI8cJvH.zWa8f2xXWn4yb-fD