Hello everyone,
I wish you all a beautiful day!
In today's Question & Answer portion that I will share as an Author,
What literary pilgrimages have you gone on?
As you might remember, my fiction writing experience happened on somewhat of a lark, a personal challenge casually made and accepted. I had been reading some work that had been published online by authors that were at a wide range of skill. Many of them had thousands of ‘reads’ and I found myself frequently dropping my interest after a few paragraphs. I’d had this experience before, and in one particularly egregious case, it involved a highly acclaimed author. In that person’s defense, I admit that the reviews on the particular work were cleanly split down the middle with as many ‘one-stars’ as there were ‘five-stars’. I thought it was particularly noteworthy that there were few reviews in the middle; people either loved his work or hated it. I’ve chronicled my thoughts on that specific subject before so I will refrain from repeating my opinions here.
The point is that my writing experience, although well regarded, is not lengthy and up until this point I have had minimal ‘pilgrimages’. Having said that, I will speak to two decisions I made that have proven, in my opinion, to be helpful in my writing. First, I moved to the area where Gary, Paige, and Suraya have their farm in Eastern Washington. I had been to the area many times before over the years, but for a variety of reasons Ems and I decided to move into the community and after writing about the region I found it interesting to drive through the farms and over the roads that I described in detail in the books.
The other ‘pilgrimage,’ if you can call it that, is that I am currently traveling in SE Asia, doing research for a series of missions that occur on the Philippine islands of Cebu, Luzon, and Mindanao. I have been here before also, but never to Dinagat Island, where I located the boutique resort that Gary purchased just prior to Operation Austin. I didn’t delve into that experience while writing The Husband Whisperer; I felt that I had taken the focus away from Sarah enough already and perhaps in the future I will write a book about Operation Miami, detailing that period of time between when Gary and Sarah broke up and the time when he met Paige. So, there you go, not a spoiler alert, but definitely a tease.
So, after a length of time writing this chronicle of adventure, and having the Philippine aspect of the story come to a focus in Operation Nashville (in development now), I found myself needing a more intimate experience with the culture and community of the Philippines, where that adventure happens. There is only so much that you can experience on the internet, and if you’ve traveled in foreign lands you know what I’m talking about. The smells, sights, and sounds of a foreign country need to be experienced in order to adequately describe them. So, Ems and I have spent three weeks here taking thousands of photos and videos, and absorbing some specific scenes that will provide much needed authenticity to that story.
That statement addresses another question that I recently answered, dealing with the value of existential experiences to an author; sometimes you just have to experience something in order to do it justice in your writing. As we’ve traveled through the islands by motor-trike and multi-cab, I have been absorbing everything I can of the scenery and street life of Asian cities, large and small. There is nothing like this in America, which is why we are here. I hope that as I begin writing that set of scenes, I can relay this experience to you, my readers, so you can feel, see, smell and hear what I have during this pilgrimage.
THANK YOU for your time reading my articles today! if you have any ideas feel free to comments.
Your honest reviews is much appreciated.
VS Campbell
Author
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