One of the best things you will ever do for yourself is to keep a journal of your first trip to Europe. This section deals with two aspects of journal writing. Before you depart you might wish to consider what approach you will take in your writing. What follows is a list of questions to pose to yourself about your writing. Take the time to write out your responses. Writing can be an effective means of intellectual growth and problem solving. By answering these questions you begin the process of self-awareness that is one of the great byproducts of travel. Following the questions, is a list of guidelines to keep in mind when writing, in order to assure that what you write survives.
Preliminary Questions
1. Why do you want to keep a travel journal?
2. What are some reasons other people keep journals?
3. How long should you write every day?
4. How often should you write?
5. Should you write more than once a day?
6. What time of day is best to write?
7. Should you always carry the volume with you? Why?
8. Why should you not write on both sides of the paper?
9. What do you want to write about?
10. Do you want to include?
- photos
- post cards
- carbon copies of letters
- items for a common place book
- information from travel books
- drawings
- dream conversations
- indexing
- traveling expenses
- ideas for later development
11. Would you want to read your journal over from time to time while you are traveling?
12. Would you care to read it aloud? Why or why not?
13. Do you think you should read examples of other journals?
14. Will you include pen portraits of people?
Suggested Guidelines for Travel Journal Writing
1. Write on one side of the paper only. Over the years the ink will bleed through the paper making it hard (or impossible) to read if you write on both sides.
2. Do not use pencil, it blurs. Pencil drawings should be treated with a preservative when you return.
3. Leave a few pages blank at the beginning and end of the volume to allow the book to be rebound in case the cover gets damaged.
4. Never let your journal out of your sight. Never put in the hold of the airplane. Keep it with you always. If it is in your day bag, never let go of that day bag even for an instant. People steal day bags because of the passports, cameras, and other valuables foolish people carry in them.
5. You can never write too much. One of my students once asked me to pass this information along to my students on a study tour. She wrote, “Tell them to write, write, write!”
6. Choose a size that fits your needs. Be sure it has a heavy-duty cover, that the pages are sewn, and ideally, contains acid-free paper.
7. When you return, photocopy your writing right away. Chances are you will want to show it off and could lose it.
8. You may want to include photographs, postcards, or tickets. If so, get archival grade tape from your librarian to affix this realia.
9. If you start writing from the front, you can turn the book over and from the back, keep a list of notes like postcards sent or notes on the rolls of film shot.
10. With an unlined book, you can take heavy card stock and make a page of lines to put under the sheet on which you are writing, so you can write straight across the page.
11. Label every entry with month, day, year, time, day of the week, and location.
12. Do not write only about the unusual, but also of the typical. Twenty-five years later, more than anything else you may want an extremely detailed account of what a typical day was like.
First and most important, remember, the journal your book, you can do with it what you want. The journal is another aspect of the trip. Traveling together as a group is an instance in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Similarly writing is an experience which, when taken as a whole, means far more than the details about which you written. The journal becomes not only a record of your trip; the writing becomes part of your life.