A Change is as Good as a Rest – Writing and Research Trip to Sri Lanka
People sometimes ask me why I love writing retreats.
Surely you can write just as easily in your own home, or in a library or coffee shop? Isn’t it an unnecessary indulgence to travel somewhere else just to interact with your imagination and put some words on a page?
Perhaps it is. But in my experience, it can open the floodgates to creative ideas when they were previously closed.
I’m writing this next to a palm fringed beach in Sri Lanka. I’ve been writing all morning. About palm fringed Sri Lankan beaches, you ask.
Afraid not. I’ve been projected back to 1907 and a doctor’s surgery in Dorking.
So, wouldn’t I have been better off making a much cheaper trip to Dorking? (For my international readers that’s Dorking in Surrey England, a town southwest of London just outside the M25 orbital motorway.)
No! Until I got to Sri Lanka I had no plan to write about Dorking! In fact, I had no idea what I was going to write at all. As I’d only sent off the manuscript of the last novel in my Hearts of Glass trilogy to my editor the day before I came away, I hadn’t a clue what was to come next.
I’ve only been to Dorking once – funnily enough to buy food supplies for another writing retreat nearby. Where, of course, I didn’t write about Dorking, but began a book set in Hampshire and London! I did borrow the house we were staying in and turned it into Bankstone which features in all three of my Hearts of Glass books (The Artist’s Apprentice, The Artist’s Wife and – drum roll – The Artist’s War).
I’m being a bit disingenuous here as I am writing about Sri Lanka – or rather Ceylon as it was then – but having written two paragraphs inspired by the scenery and ambience of the tea plantation I was staying on last week, I realised I needed to dip back to Dorking to develop the back story in order to get my characters over here.
I suppose what I’m saying in a rambling way is that there’s a difference between seeking inspiration and conducting research. My trip to Sri Lanka is covering both.
Here, at the beach, I’m hammering away at my laptop, with no mention of the sun-kissed sand and the high temperature. But the absence of the distractions I get at home, the soothing sound of the breaking waves (it’s great for surfers), the taste of a delicious fruit smoothie or a cold beer, all help get my fingers tapping the keyboard. Besides, it’s too darn hot to do anything else.
But this trip has also served me well for research. During the four days I spent up in the hills, as well as writing, I was photographing the tea plantations, drinking endless cups of tea, talking at length to a retired tea planter, touring a tea factory, having tea with him at a golf club built in the nineteenth century by the British and still exactly as it was then, visiting an old colonial club and staying in beautifully restored planter’s bungalow built in 1925.
Enjoying tea with a tea planter!
Trying my hand at tea-picking…
So, this has been very much a working holiday – but in a fabulous location. No different from some of the business trips I did when a wage slave and then running my own business! I was lucky enough then, in between trips to warehouses in Warrington or Wolverhampton, to spend a week running a workshop in the middle of a game reserve in Africa, doing idea generation with clients in Singapore, New York and at a country club in California among others and developing business strategy in the middle of the New Forest. So why should it be any harder to justify as an author?
Whether it’s affordable is a different question. I’m fortunate to be relatively high earning as an author and I had anyway secured my future before I began writing fulltime. I recognise that not every writer can escape to the other side of the world to get a book off the launchpad. But the principles are still true. There’s always somewhere you can go to. A park, a café, a friend’s house, a museum or art gallery, a few days’ getaway to somewhere you can visit on a budget.
My trip to Sri Lanka was on my own. I find this has two advantages. There’s less distraction. There’s no guilt if I decide to write, write, write, at the expense of doing other stuff. Then non-writing holidays can be complete holidays. (Although as a writer I’m always mulling stuff in my head).
I have another writing retreat next month. In France. But this time with other writer friends. I’ll likely get less writing done but there will be much writerly talk, other minds on hand to help wrestle a plot problem, sharing of marketing and publishing ideas, and most importantly general camaraderie over lots of wine. Writing is mostly a solitary activity so getting together with friends who follow the same calling is always rewarding.
My last night in Sri Lanka will be spent in Colombo at the Galle Face Hotel. I plan to drink a cocktail there while watching the sun set. Those of you who have read A Painter in Penang and Jasmine in Paris may remember this majestic old colonial hotel. It was where Evie and Jasmine stayed en route to Penang from Kenya and first met Howard Baxter. It’s then the location for the finale of Jasmine – no longer in Paris! When I wrote those scenes, I’d never been to the hotel so I’m keen to know what it’s like in reality. I’ll report back in a future blog post.
Time for a fruit cocktail?
Up in the hills!
What joy to learn you are writing a book set in the beautiful Sri Lanka. I have visited many times and you have sent me right back there! Gorgeous country and wonderful people – now looking forward to release date!
Thank you Claire. Early days yet but I am hoping to make a lot of headway next week on the book when I am away ion a writing retreat. it was my second visit and like you was charmed by the place – although I find it very hot. The people are indeed wonderful.