How can journaling on holiday pay?

[Bruce Atchison]

Vacations are a time of fun and relaxation but they can also help your writing career. I discovered this fact as I worked on my upcoming memoir, How I Was Razed. The journal that I kept brought back details that I had forgotten. As I read it decades later, I kept saying, "Ah yes," as I turned the pages. Memories from that time flooded back, giving me a lot of inspiration and useful material.

When I arrived in Trinidad in November of 1982, One of the first things I bought was a red 6" by 8" hard cover notebook from Woolworth's. It cost me the Canadian equivalent of $2.25 but now it's worth much more. Whenever I had time, I wrote down the day's activities. Even small details, such as my delight in the fireflies illuminating the trees like living Christmas lights, were noted in it. The entries helped keep events straight as well. For example, two friends drove me with their families to Los Iros Bay. The journal helped me sort out the events of each trip. Most importantly to the manuscript's theme, I was reminded of what I preached at the Clark Road crusade and at the Diamond Village church. My memoir would have suffered had I neglected writing down those memory joggers.

During previous vacations, I neglected to jot down the places I went to and the things I did. I had to flog my memory during the part about my 1977 missions trip to Saltillo, Mexico with Operation Mobilization. Had I not kept the slide show script and the slides of the trip which they sold us, my account of those times would have been even sketchier.

Today, we have many ways to keep track of what we did on our holidays. People can write using their laptops, capture sounds on MP3 recorders, take pictures on cell phone cameras, and send tweets from internet cafes. All these can serve as reminders of the little things which add colour to our articles and memoirs. Many writers often include elements of their vacation settings in fiction stories. Though a person can look up facts through Google and watch home videos on YouTube, the true flavour of a country can only be experienced by being there and, as I did in Mexico, Trinidad, and Russia, living with the local people. If I ever go on holiday again, I'll be sure to take notes of everything I do and say. As I found out in 1997 when I sold an article about visiting the Voice of Russia World Service, those memories could actually be worth money.