I watch the world from my desk.
A detailed map of all seven continents looms by the chair in my home office. It’s a relatively new purchase; one I made as soon as I realized that my YA alternate history novel Wolf By Wolf featured a cross-continental motorcycle race from Germania (once Berlin) to Tokyo. The borders and race routes of my alternate history universe are marked out with Sharpie. Many hours have been spent staring at its laminated expanse, trying to figure out the perils my characters will have to deal with next chapter. Saharan sandstorm? Check. Being stranded in a snowy wilderness? Double check.
Not only is this a useful tool for plotting world domination (the fictional kind, of course), but it’s also a constant reminder to get out there and explore. Because, sometimes, the world is my desk.
As I’ve discussed before; travelling is essential to my creative process. Stories aren’t pieced together in a vacuum. Discovering different landscapes, eating new foods and meeting people from all walks of life fill my creative well. These experiences provide inspiration I never could’ve hoped to find sitting at home, staring at a screen cursor.
But the thing I love about laptops? You can take them anywhere! On a plane, in a train, to the beach - I’ll stop before this gets too Seussian, but you get the idea. My husband and I are both fortunate enough to be full time artists, so neither of us are bound by the fourteen vacation days a year that so many of our peers are beholden to. No physical office can contain us!
Unfortunately, deadlines are also without borders. Most of my trips are accompanied by a healthy dose of work. I still end up staring at a cursor, but at least the world around my screen is the non-laminated version.
Does this really help your creative process, Ryan? I hear you asking.
Why, yes, dear reader! Here’s proof:
I took a trip to Yangshuo, China in early 2014. I was working on my rough draft of Wolf By Wolf at the time, stealing away to our hotel’s veranda to work within phenomenal views of the karst landscape. I was about two-thirds of the way through the book, and I hadn’t quite figured out what elements of the Axis Tour’s racing path to feature in the narrative as the motorcycle racers drove from Hanoi to Shanghai. After exploring the countryside around Yangshuo, I became enamoured with its dramatic mountains, roadside tombs and winding green river filled with cormorants and bamboo rafts. Was it possible I could work these elements into Wolf By Wolf? Once I returned to my home office and consulted my map, I realised that Yangshuo was perfectly situated to be featured in the Axis Tour. Thus, Chapter 28, (which features a harrowing ferry crossing over the Li River on bamboo rafts) sprang into existence.
In the end, of course, there’s no place like home. I return to my office, where a wolf-dog lies at my feet and the true bulk of writing gets done. An endless mug of herbal tea steeps by my elbow. I look back to the map above my desk and dream.
