Who Are You Writing For?

I went travelling a few years ago, on my own which would be unremarkable if I were a 21-year old-bloke, but I was a 56-year-old woman.

Before I left, I got prepared. I knew that the only way to contain the experience was in notebooks.

I came home with thirteen tightly-scribbled exercise books.

I had enough detail to recall every hotel room, every uncomfortable bus ride, every glorious view. As well as those stomach-sinking moments of homesickness.

I still dip into those notebooks from time to time, remember the bathroom attached to my little hut in the Malaysian jungle that smelled of cabbages; the guide who abandoned me outside a massage parlour in Kerala.

At the same time, I wrote a blog of my travels. This was for friends and family.

My blog was designed to be entertaining, reassuring, and generally make sure nobody forgot who I was in the months I was away.

Adventures were censored; nobody needed to know just how many mistakes I made. For instance, I got very lost, soon after I arrived in Australia. It’s a big place to be lost, and has serious snakes and spiders. But I regaled my readers with aboriginal stories from the museum and relegated any mention of being lost to a final, amusing, postscript. An incident involving a man with a gun in Lucknow never even made it to the blog. I have daughters. They did not need to know.

For I did keep in closer touch with them. They generally knew where I was, and – if I knew any plans, I shared them. But guns – I kept any hint of guns to myself.

And now – what of all these ramblings?

I have teased them into a book. And that is different again – this is a book that tells a story.

The task, this time, has been to take all the drivel from the notebooks, plus the sanitized efforts on the blog, and transform them into something coherent and entertaining.

This time I’ve had to think as a reader – what might be interesting, or different, or funny about my trip? What makes it distinct, even (dare I say it) compelling?

I had to sieve through the pages of scribble to find those details that would build into a story. Who cares what colour the walls were in the hostel in Kuala Lumpur (white). Who needs to know what I thought of the Sydney Opera House, the Taj Mahal – I have pages of notes on both, but most people know what they look like. It is difficult to be surprising about anything that is easy to find on youtube.

But I did have other stories.

This time the getting lost, even the man with the gun, are what make this trip unique.

No longer did I need to downplay anything – my daughters knew I was safely home – and I could invest in story. I reshaped the journey with readers in mind.

There were things that I was sad to leave out. I skated over the magic of the Taj Mahal at daybreak – though it is truly astonishing and made me want to cry. I found some wonderful creation stories in Australia and New Zealand, and again in Malaysia; found myself interested in animism and how this shapes the lives of tribes still living in the jungle. But they were my excitements. I can feel readers yawning even as I write. No – all that was gone.

I worked instead on establishing a sense of jeopardy, highlighting my own incompetence (well, that didn’t need much exaggeration, if I’m honest), and making sure the story was compelling – and fun.

So, now I’m here, writing for women about writing a book about travelling. Yet another shift in approach to the same material.

And you? Who are you writing for? And why?

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Jo Carroll’s working title for her book is Over the Hill and Far Away.

Follow her on Twitter at @jomcarroll.

Subscribe to her blog Gap Years: The Book http://gapyearsthebook.blogspot.com

 

Tags: protecting readers, selecting stories to tell, travel writer, travel writing

Category: British Women Writers, Contemporary Women Writers