The Places You'll Go

Writers and travelers are mesmerized alike by knowing of their destinations. -- Eudora Welty (1909-2001) American author

One of the points J.T. made on her excellent Murderati post last Friday (point #3, to be specific) was for writers, aspiring or otherwise, to join a few genre-specific web threads. Last night I re-enlisted with DorothyL, a discussion list devoted to mysteries. I'd been on DL for a while, but took a two-month break while I was straightening out some of the kinks that had cropped up in my life. Kinks notwithstanding, I decided it was time to get back on the circuit. DorothyL has something over 3,000 members now, both writers and readers - that's a lot of people seeing your name when you post a comment. Talk about a great marketing opportunity - all it takes is one of those 3,000 people clicking on your URL and you have another potential fan, right? And let any writer tell you, we may love to write, it may be in our blood, but if it weren't for the fans out there, the readers, there wouldn't be any point to our doing this.

Five years ago this summer, we took the kids and my parents to South Dakota for our summer vacation. In the airport in Indianapolis, my mother turned to me and said, "Tell me again why we're going to South Dakota?" I took my laptop with me on that trip and kept a sort of daily journal of all the places we went - Mt. Rushmore, the Needles, Custer State Park, the Badlands, the Crazy Horse monument, Devil's Tower (a short jaunt into Wyoming). At one point on our tour of the park, standing at the top of a mountain and enjoying a particularly breathtaking view of the Black Hills, I turned to my mother and said, "This, Mom, is why we came to South Dakota."

About now you're probably asking yourself what the preceding two stories have to do with each other and with the quote at the top of this post. The simple answer is, it's about the destination, and that's true, but it's also about the journey. Travel involves getting somewhere, someplace you know you want to go. Writing is the same thing as traveling - you're going somewhere with your story, and most of the time you know your destination from the beginning. And getting there is half the fun.

Music of the Moment: Currently playing on the radio - "Jessica" by the Allman Brothers - one of my favorites.

Read a book. Take that journey with the author, and enjoy your trip.

=) JB