Guest Post: Why Traveling is an Essential Element of Storytelling

I have two books published and one in my laptop waiting. I have traveled throughout the Caribbean to more than 20 islands and more than 15 states including Hawaii’s five main islands with more to come as I’m making plans to travel to Oregon, Washington state and Alaska by next summer. When I am traveling I always have my mind’s eye open to the possibility of a future story or book to write. I have found that, while traveling, it is important to pay attention to your surroundings and even to your dreams at night. When you wake up write your dreams down. That dream may be about some place that you had seen during the day. It could lead to a book one day as two of my books came from dreams. Dreams are short most of the time but you can expand them. Keep your mind working in overtime all the time even around your hometown… it could be more interesting than you realize.

When I was in Puerto Rico my wife and I visited the El Morro Fortress in San Juan. It was built in 1584 to protect the city from pirates and even during World War Two it was used to watch for German ships and U-boats. I went in all the hallways and rooms where men slept and lived. I saw where they cared for the wounded. I looked out over the Caribbean and could see in my mind the men going around the fort preparing for battle. The cannons being readied and the bugle being blown to alert the men that battle was close and the proud flag flying overhead. Then there was the rain forest in Puerto Rico. I could see rebels or pirates cutting their way through the lush thick forest and hair raising times crossing the rivers with hundred foot waterfalls that could be the end of them.

In Cozumel, Mexico we went to the Milan ruins and I could see in my mind the tribes sacrificing people to their Gods and where they married each other. One idea is to take your camera and have it ready to take pictures. This is a great way to bring back details to your memory; I always have mine ready. Anywhere you go you might get a picture of an animal, birds, or even an Iguana that you can insert in a story. The Hawaiian Islands were great fodder for story ideas. The volcanos and sacrificing virgins to the Gods. The beaches with the pipe-line and the North Shore have so many stories within them. Then there is Pearl Harbor and the many stories about World War Two and the sacrifice men and women made.

Then traveling through New Mexico and Arizona the desert and mountains bring to mind all the old west stories of gold and silver mines and the men and women that help develop those states before moving on to Colorado and California. These are my kinds of books but you might have a different interest. It can all be awaken in your mind by traveling and opening your mind’s eye. Good luck where ever you go and in finding your story or book. Remember, keep your mind active and don’t forget the dreams. 

Lynn Luick is from Texas but was born in Oregon. He has a wife, two daughters and three grandchildren. He loves nature and traveling. He has been working for 50 years - first in a grocery store and then his own distributing business - to raise his family. He has always wanted to write but was too busy to do so. Now that he has retired, he has plenty of time to do what he loves. He will be traveling and writing more "Silver Buck" adventures and also other Western titles. He loves to write fiction stories about places he has been.

Has It Really Been That Long?

 

It is that time again. Today marks the 800^th post for the blog and I am a little dumbfounded as to how I have been able to keep the blog going for that long. This is especially true when you consider the fact that the average length of each entry has been about 500 words. That is a total of 400,000 words... and that is being pretty conservative with the estimate. Is there really that much that can be said?

While I continue to look for guest bloggers and other interesting items to include in the various posts, there haven’t been many contributions up to this point. That might be the hardest part of this whole thing. I would like some more interesting and different perspectives included in these pages. I am happy to continue sharing my thoughts on various subjects but there is only so much that I can say without becoming repetitive (this is already evident in a number of posts).

However, I continue to enjoy the process and the simple fact that I am able to record my daily life, discoveries, and events that are of particular interest to me. As I have said before, this is my way of leaving a legacy. It isn’t anything special but the words here on this blog give a much fuller picture of who I am rather than just a few documents. This is part of the reason why the more I look into the family history the more motivated I am to continue writing.

With that said, time has become more precious over the past year in particular and there are changes on the horizon that will definitely put additional strain on my schedule. These are all good things but they take time and energy. Don’t get me wrong, the blog will continue but, with these additional commitments, the long periods of silence may become more prevalent. Of course, this may be a moot point if some of you out there would like to contribute to the blog (hint, hint, nudge, nudge).

Right now it is just a matter of pushing through the slow days when writing seems more like a chore and taking advantage of the easy days when I can quickly write three or four posts. There are certainly a number of topics that I will continue to cover (i.e. genealogy, freemasonry, firearms, travel, parenthood, etc.) but I am looking for other subjects and also want to know what subject you want me to write more about. So what would you like to read? Also, I am well aware that this blog is by no means perfect. What would you change? Let me know your thoughts.

I end this post very simply. Thank you for your continued support and sharing with me your thoughts, stories, and opinions. It has been an interesting experience thus far.

Still Behind But Catching Up

As you have most certainly noticed at this point, I am a little behind in writing blog posts (again). There was little time while we were away to write anything and when I did have a free moment or two there were a slew of emails that need to be sent. When those were done I decided to upload the pictures from the camera and sort through them rather than writing the posts to accompany them. I am actually glad that I did it this way as I was able to organize the hundreds of images making the subsequent writing much easier.

I am slowly catching up but still have a lot of work ahead of me all the while the amount of free time seems to be evaporating with every project that we have been putting off can’t be delayed any longer. There is some overdue cleaning that insidiously welcomed us back after our time away and there is a lot of organization that has been a nonstarter up to this point as well (mostly in our offices). And, of course, there is the readjustment back to our daily routines and the various tasks at work that seem to be convening this month just as I am just starting to get back ahead of things at the office.  

With that said, I am slowly getting the backlog of posts written and actually beginning to plan a fair amount of future posts as there are a lot of topic that I hope to cover in future days, weeks, and months as well as a number of places, events, and news items that I am planning on revisiting. There are also a few things marked on my calendar that should provide a bit of fodder for the blog. While I like to be a bit more ‘in the moment’ with these posts, having a good list of topics and ideas is a great way to prevent the long periods of inactivity due to a lack of material (the worst kind of gap).

However, while I have a long list of topics, subjects, and events that I will be writing about, I welcome any suggestions that you might have. After all, you are the ones that are reading these posts every day (even when they aren’t quite fresh given the number of views I received absent of new content). Additionally, I welcome guest posts, especially those from family members about our genealogy as well as submissions from other families about some of the interesting stories and discoveries that they have found. Hopefully, there will be a few such post in the future but, in the meantime, if you don’t have the time to write feel free to share your idea in the comments below. Maybe it will be the subject of a future post.

Falling Behind for Good Reason

My blog schedule sometimes has the same effect on people.

As it relates to this blog and the schedule that I keep trying to make sure everything is up to date it has been an interesting year to say the least. While I maintain this space as a place for daily posts and schedule them accordingly, there have been instances when I have fallen behind and for good reason. But, in the end, I always make up for the lost time and posts in order to return continuity to the project.

In addition to a routine that has taken a radical left turn in the last few months, there have been a couple of events that have caused my disappearance from this blog. The first significant one was when my son was born. Days in the hospital, lack of sleep, and a complete shift in focus completely pulled me away from writing these posts and from just about anything else in the world that didn’t involve our son. It was well over a week before I was able to get things back on track.

The other large gap that I can recall was just over a week ago when I was hit by a sudden and nasty case of food poisoning. I try to get ahead and write a few things here and there that I can archive for a future date but that has not been happening as frequently as I would like and they are used too often due to a lack of available time and an ever changing schedule. Only now am I able to finally catch up and get things on track again. I guess we will just have to see how long this one lasts.

I am till in the process of finding a few guest bloggers on a variety of topics in order to alleviate a little of the scheduling demands but thus far it has been difficult to find people to make the commitment. In the meantime, I will just keep writing. Some of the post will be a bit of a ramble like this one while others will be a little more opinionated, interesting, and/or research based. As many of you have found out, you really don’t know what to expect on most days and to be honest there are a lot of days when I have no idea what is going to be posted either.

So, I guess if you want to be picky, this hasn’t really been a daily blog. It has been a nearly daily blog but there has been no hiding that fact as anyone who follows my posts has noticed that from time to time there are some days that go by without a new entry and, all of the sudden, I am caught up a few days later. Heck, if you are reading this post you will notice that it didn’t quite make it up in time for the day that it was scheduled.

Guest Blog: Genealogical Verification

Whenever you attempt to write about your family history in narrative form, there are always potential problems. These usually come in the form of the difficulty of verifying family histories in times when community records were never kept or (at best) are incomplete. Such circumstances make it difficult to substantiate important ancestral events and their significance to the overall story you are trying to tell. The only way to address these issues is to take the following steps.

The first is to only use those tales that you can demonstrate to the reader has some form of truth or logical reasoning for its inclusion. In my novel, The Legacy of Two Gemini Knights, I would estimate that I only used around 40% of the tales in my family archive. The remaining 60% had to be disregarded because of questionable sources. Adding them, whether I liked it or not, may have lessened the power of the text in one way or another.

The second step is to try to cross-reference any type of material you are using. Books, magazines and especially the World Wide Web do provide excellent means of providing added credibility to your written arguments. For example, much of the information on the Battle of Teba, Spain in 1330 as employed in the book, did help me formulate the Logan brothers’ and the other Templar knights’ roles in this conflict and the impact it eventually had on the rest of the story.

Another way to look at family genealogy is to visit those places that your ancestors came from. Often, small details are not included in the notes of official texts. On a number of occasions I have picked up vital clues to a story line, by talking to people at the scene or looking at the physical evidence myself. Such things can often give a particular insight to events that would otherwise be lost and in doing so leave the material written rather shallow and without conviction. For example, my visit to Leith, Scotland, did help me understand how my ancestors coped with such harsh living conditions at the time. As a result one could understand how the social culture of that period shaped the characters thinking on a daily basis and so in turn helped me to enrich the content of the text.

Finally, one can verify genealogical situations by establishing a linear series of events that fit together in some fashion. This maybe over a time frame or within a cultural setting that has already been established in other recorded contexts. Again, when talking about the Gemini Knights and their association with the town of Lanark, the land estates in west Scotland and St. Andrews in Leith, they were all established as important to the next part of the story by the interlinking efforts of further research. Such facts enabled family stories and genealogy to fit into the context of the broader textual message of the existing story with some degree of reality and understanding. Thus, hopefully improving the thrust of the book in some way.

However, no matter how one tries, there will always be gaps in any story from such a long way back in time. And we as authors must always accept that someone else will come along in the future and say your analysis on certain situations today are incorrect. And unfortunately, this is the price we pay for taking the conversation one step further in the here and now. Nevertheless, all we can do is our best at the time of writing one`s book and just hope the reader appreciates the genealogical contributions and connections made to date.

Geoff Logan, a veteran university lecturer, has a master’s degree in education from Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia. He now serves as an independent education consultant. “The Legacy of Two Gemini Knights” is his first book.