What Goes into a Travel Memoir?

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.
― Anaïs Nin

I used to have a travel blog not meant for everyone's consumption, it was more of a journal and recollection of thoughts. I stopped writing when I was traveling and had become quite uninterested continuing. Then I wonder, what it would be like to write and travel at the same time? For sure, others have been doing it quite well, but for me, I don't think I would manage both, either I write or travel. And even if I could, then perhaps, my blog would be a generic one, something about a place, food, and how-tos. I like to write about these from time to time but it is not really my thing, I feel like just repeating other blogs out there and becoming another version of trip advisor.

I even tried writing when I was traveling, but I just couldn't manage to focus and reflect. There were so many things in my mind. There are a lot of things to think about when you are traveling, people you meet, places to go next, hanging out at the bar, going to the beach and spending time with new friends. In short, too many distractions. Even if I am alone in my room, I still could not write good enough. I realized that maybe, I wouldn't be able to write how I want, so I felt, it was better for me not to write at all and just focus on the moment.

I have spent years meeting and talking to strangers, new friends and people from all over the world, and that time I craved solitude more than anything else. That being alone that time became a luxury I had to afford - paying for the bus, paying for accommodation and visiting national parks on my own. I guess that is what happens when you grow old. My solitude is sublime.

Now that I have what I want, I begin writing again. I am actually surprised at how much I can produce with this prolonged aloneness, and I'm not even lonely. Well, there were times of course, but I realized how much I have preferred this time for myself. I guess there's a difference between being alone and being lonely, the latter is an emotional state. My mind is so busy at the moment that I do not have time to have this feeling. I just realized that I really have a lot of things to do in life.

With concentrated agony, I could write with more focus. After a long time of not writing, I figured I have a lot of things to work on, and every day, I get the chance to improve. I guess now, it is much easier to reflect and reminisce when you take solitude as a necessity to produce your own art. I don't have a lot of distractions anymore and I could write the way I want. The artistic process unfolds during those hours, work happens. I have to have a space free of distraction, even my cat has to go outside, otherwise, I won't be able to write. It is like meditation, it is the only way for me to let the words run freely on the screen without having to think of what else to write, I have to control my own creative energy. It has become natural. It takes some discipline to fulfill this, and you really have to love solitude.

Writing a travel memoir is like putting myself back there, being vulnerable again. It's like being in the zone, those hours were like remembering things that I should have or should not have forgotten, but having to recall those moments in the past is like being human again, a lot of feelings involved. It is sometimes not easy to go back and write how I felt those times, that I would find myself even crying while writing. But it releases all these things inside my system, it frees me. I have to actually sit with my feelings and turn it into a narrative. It is realizing how I am holding too much and feeling too much. It is having the courage to go deep, and having my soul turned inside out. A travel experience can be joyous, painful, whimsical or just plain forgettable, but it does not have to stay within my body. I feel the need to write even more.

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.
― Jack Kerouac