Magical adventures
Travel, or any setting that takes me away from my everyday environment, offers the raw materials for storytelling - transforming new experiences into ideas for characters, setting and plot.
Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time in Berlin. It is a city I know well and it’s a city that’s changed significantly since I first visited in the nineties. Berlin, to me, is like a rebellious teenager, a city that beats to its own drum and doesn’t give a damn what anyone else thinks. It is not a beautiful city, like Paris or Florence is, but it has soul. It is also one of my favourite places - influencing and inspiring me in many different ways, so much so that it was the inspiration for my second novel.
The novel, which I’m in the process of writing, is set over a year and charts the life of the central protagonist who has moved to Berlin in the hope of putting down roots. However, she struggles to make any connections and finds herself lonely and adrift. Through her experience of living in this city, I’m exploring the idea of belonging and what “home” means to different people.
Similarly, the author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie cited travel for influencing her exploration of identity and belonging, which is brilliantly depicted in ‘Americanah’, one of my favourite novels. And Jack Kerouac’s iconic novel ‘On the Road’ (another favourite) was inspired by his road trips across America. Travel not only fuels the imagination but also instills a sense of wonder and connection that resonates through a writer's work, inviting readers to embark on journeys of their own.
Travel for me, especially somewhere I haven’t been to before, means looking at my own life from a different perspective, offering new insights. It has also - significantly - broadened my understanding of the world and I’ve been very fortunate to have travelled extensively - from Iceland and India to Argentina and Tanzania and everything in between. I have my favourite places of course (Berlin being one of them) and some have moved me profoundly and remained with me long after I left.
One of the most fascinating places I’ve visited is India, because it really is an assault on the senses: the scents, the riot of colour and the cacophony of sounds. In fact, the plot of my debut novel, ‘From West Yorkshire to East Berlin’ briefly moves to Calcutta (now Kolkata) and I dug deeply into my memories of the country, unearthing impressions of my visit there some twenty years ago.
Of course, you don’t have to visit somewhere first in order to write about it - cue imagination! - but it certainly helped me to add depth and authenticity to my writing. I also don’t think I would have had the idea of bringing the plot to India in the first place if it wasn’t for my trip there.
I recently revisited Istanbul after many years. My overall memories of that first trip are rather vague, but what I do remember in detail is the city’s iconic Grand Bazaar - the largest and oldest market in the world, which sells everything from spices to silk. And it hasn’t changed. It’s still a wonderfully unique place to browse through and I can imagine it has inspired many stories.
There are so many places I still hope to visit one day - Alaska, Japan, Vancouver…the list goes on. But no matter where I am in the world, I’ve found that it’s usually the simplest things - strolling in a park or sitting in a cafe watching the world go by (ah the pleasures of people watching) - where I find myself being inspired the most … a notebook at hand just in case …
As the car navigated potholes and holy cows, Jack marvelled at the images around him: women gliding past, a kaleidoscope of colour in their silk saris; lively street hawkers selling chai, the distinct aroma of ginger, cardamom and cloves wafting through the air; and monkeys playfully wafting in between all the activity. When he finally arrived at the ashram…Jack carefully removed his brogues and stood in front of the threshold, which was little more than a flimsy beaded screen.
Excerpt from ‘West Yorkshire to East Berlin,’ Chapter 12