I spent the weekend at my first ever writing conference, Grub Street's The Muse & the Marketplace, right here in Boston. One of my heroes Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto, was the keynote speaker.
It was a truly intense experience, exceeding my expectations in every way, a feeling I heard from many others there. I thought I would just be musing today on the value of conferences (whatever your topic) and the value of traveling to them. It was hard to clear the decks for an in-town conference, to prepare for and focus on it, and would have been easier if it were out of town. On the other hand, meeting so many other writers from Greater Boston and our region and knowing they are right nearby, as well as those that traveled to our city, was powerful.
Fortunately I stumbled upon a different travel topic. I went to a workshop on "Extreme Research" by New York Times best selling author Jenna Blum. While her current research is obviously extreme, chasing tornadoes with storm chasers, Jenna defines extreme research as any research that involves leaving your chair or library, inluding "method research" like she undertook for her novel Those Who Save Us set in World War II Germany. She not only traveled to Germany to see (hear and smell) many locations, but according to the article she showed us from Poets & Writers Magazine (at Nov/Dec 2007 issue but login required) back home baked the German pastries her character would bake, and at one point dressed like her, in preparation for Those Who Save Us.
Although leaving the realm of google for an actual library might sound exotic itself these days, (and going to libraries in other cities is a topic I'll return to some day), getting out and actually interviewing or job shadowing, let alone taking multiple trips abroad or into threatening weather is something I didn't know novelists did. I haven't written fiction since college, and had never thought about writing fiction so far removed from my own (existing) experience.
Research of all kinds is a great reason to travel. I am already dreaming up some research projects for when I do try fiction, and other writing projects. Have you ever engaged in "Extreme Research" or other travel for research?
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