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.

Keeping The Travel List In Perspective

As you may have read yesterday, I am finally at the point in the year when I am giving considerable thought to the places that my wife and I would enjoy visiting this summer. Of course, this is in addition to any business travel as well as the lodge related trips to Erie, Scranton, Philadelphia, and, probably, Elizabethtown that I will be making during the sweltering season. Interestingly, while I was thinking about summer travel and putting my list together I came across an email (thanks Vocus) about the top ten destinations as reported by the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Talk about keeping things in perspective!

For those of you unfamiliar with Make-A-Wish, here is the summary of the nonprofit from their website:

Make-A-Wish^® grants the wish of a child diagnosed with a life-threatening medical condition in the United States and its territories, on average, every 38 minutes. We believe that a wish experience can be a game-changer. This one belief guides us. It inspires us to grant wishes that change the lives of the kids we serve.

Not all wishes require travel, many of them do and the foundation is determined to make sure that distance is not a hindrance to the fulfillment of those dreams forming in a child’s mind. 

While my wife and I visit places to get away and relax a bit, for these kids, these are dream destinations, not just a simple means of getting away. However, these trips do offer some sense of escape from reality which seems to be why the destinations tend to focus on places where wish kids and their families can experience the excitement something different whether it is a big city, theme park, foreign country, or beach destination. Based on data from wish trips that occurred in 2013, the destinations most visited by wish kids and their families were:

1. Orlando
2. Hawaii
3. Los Angeles & Orange County
4. The Caribbean
5. New York City
6. San Diego
7. France
8. Italy
9. Australia
10. Alaska

It is an interesting and diverse list and something to think about when putting your own summer itinerary together. We constantly focus on the places where we are going and forget the reasons why we go. It is to spend time together and experience life together beyond the usual routine of life. For some of us all it takes is a day trip while others need a little more and need to go a little further to put their daily lives behind them. We all need a break now and then, some people just need more of a break than others.

Attempting to Find Home: 2011 Edition

After experiencing so much preparation, hard work, stress, bureaucracy, joy, spirituality, and love, today is one of mixed emotions for me. It is a day to remember joy but which also leaves me asking the question what if? I don’t think that either one of those feelings will ever go away especially on this day, our Aliyah Anniversary.

Two years ago our Nefesh b’Nefesh charter flight landed with a roar of cheers and tears rolling up and down the aisle. As we finally came to a rest, there was a mix of both vocal anticipation and stunned silence. It was time for us new Israelis to return our feet to the home land.

We were overwhelmed by the joyous noise that flooded this old terminal at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. So many people were there to greet all of us… some of them didn’t even know anyone on the flight they just wanted to support us. I can’t even remember the walk from the plane to the reception as the mix of no sleep (on the 10 hour flight) and excitement has hazed my memory.

I will always consider that moment to be one of the greatest of my life but sometimes a journey can start off great and, not be the right path. This is what we faced during our time in Israel. Our Aliyah adventure came to an abrupt end as Hashem led us back home to our family. I may be disappointed by the outcome but I will never regret the choice we made to try.

It is a day that I hope is being celebrated throughout the beautiful land of Israel by many of our fellow olim from that flight. I wish everyone nothing but the best and I pray that your dreams surround you throughout your lives. I also encourage anyone thinking about making Aliyah to pursue it with everything you have and every essence of your being. I guarantee that it is something that you will never regret regardless of the final outcome.

Daydreaming And Driving

Most days and nights I fall asleep and wake up having felt I had just settled into slumber. I rarely remember dreams and the ones I do quickly blur and are taken over by the waking activity of my mind. I can’t recall the last vivid dream which flooded my nocturnal hours.

The dreams I can recollect are those that happen during the times of attention and activity. All my senses are occupied during these times of conscious aspiration and I hold those memories close in order to fill the void which the night brings. These waking wisps of imagination are the catalyst which fuels my motivation to keep writing and to keep pushing forward.

However, these too can escape my grasp on occasion which is why I have employed a dream catcher to hold those thoughts for retrieval at a later time, a time when my creative spirit may be lacking. My belief being that what is used to filter out the bad dreams from entering at night can hold onto the good dreams which blossom in the light of day. The only question was where do I put it? After applying an amount of thought and consideration normally reserved for a blank piece of paper, I found the place which would provide the most benefit. Hopefully the picture above was obvious enough.

As many of my dreams are birthed during the straight monotonous roads where muscle memory is more important than dedicated thought, I decided to hang this powerful receptacle in the back window of my car. With our increased travel lately, my mind has been working overtime during these trips to make up for what is absent during unconsciousness. This is the perfect position.

Will it work? I don’t know but being that my ability to create is so integral to my sense of self, I am willing to try. I have already come close to losing my ability to the void and I know how frustrating it is to have the wealth of life surround you but finding yourself unable to express those experiences on the page. I can’t lose that flame again.

I don’t just want to live life and experience as much as I can, I need to illuminate the world from my eyes, from my perspective. If nothing else, I want to constantly remind myself to dream and to keep pushing myself to create. I need to catch those moments and lock them tight within my words because without the fictional escape of sleep, written reality is all I have so I am going to make it as vibrant and beautiful as possible.  

Living Like Peter Pan (Tights Optional)

In a blog I posted on Tuesday about a networking event that I attended I posted the questions that were discussed during the meeting. One of the questions has continued to linger in my mind for the past week and is now prompting me to record my thoughts on the subject. “What did you want to be when you grew up? In what ways does your current job resemble parts of that early ambition?”

My response to this question during the event was typical of many men my age… growing up I wanted to be a professional baseball player. Really you can insert any kind of professional athlete and you would describe about 95% of the male population. Once many of us realize that that would take some level of athletic ability the dream slowly fades and reality takes hold of our lives.

Later in life, in my early twenties, I wanted to write for a living. My primary genre was poetry but I knew that I would never be able to make a living creating poems. Having published in numerous literary journals and even having my own book put out by a publisher made that reality very clear… I would have to find another genre if I was going to support myself.

I still write both personally (obvious if you are reading this) and professionally and I am never happier when I am able to write something that has particular meaning for me or that has a demonstrated impact on others. This blog has been that source of creative happiness that has long been absent. I have read comments and gotten feedback that has made me continue to push to get out a blog every day and keep pushing to improve.

This leads me back to the question posed above. For me, what it really comes down to is that when we are kids we want to continue to do what we enjoy… this is what we want to do when we grow up. So later in life we must ask the child imprisoned within each of us whether we enjoy the work that we are doing (whether as a profession or a hobby). Does the daily joy and hope from childhood remain in our consciousness?

For me, I am enjoying writing again. This is what I want to continue to do when I grow up and something that I will continue to work at and hopefully will be able to apply in my next position. Creativity is my passion and writing is my method of expression and so long as I continue to write I will forever be an incarnation of J. M. Barrie’s imagination.