To writers, looking at pictures of Hugh Jackman is work…honest

Pictures, YouTube videos, magazines…we writers have the best excuse to study them all. Whether it’s Hugh Jackman, Johnny Depp or Justin Babemagnet, they’re our source of hero material. The same with travel. Anywhere a writer goes is fuel for a future book, and the trip most likely tax deductible. Check with your accountant on this, it’s not my field, but we have to get our material from somewhere. Vacations are a great resource.

A few years ago I sailed to Cape York and Thursday Island on a converted cargo vessel. Before setting off I decided this would be a complete vacation. I wouldn’t take notes, hunt out possible locations, collect local real estate magazines for property references. My writer brain would be completely off line. After travelling widely in the name of research, this really appealed and I soaked it up. Snorkelling, fishing, sight seeing, wining, dining, all done without a notebook in sight.

Then I came home and…I’m sure you can guess the rest. Yep. I wrote the entire trip into a book called Island of Dreams which was later serialised in Woman’s Day. And I kicked myself for not keeping receipts as proof that I’d been working the whole way. Because I had. Unbeknown even to myself, I’d stored away scenes and story possibilities for what became a widely translated book, one of my favourites.

Research beckons...

Lesson learned. No matter where I’ve travelled since, I consider the trip at least partly research. Because the well has to be filled somehow. Your first few books may be written from experience and set in familiar places. But sooner or later you’ll need new input and the stimulation of new experiences.  You may not use any of it for months or years, but you will find yourself dipping into the well and coming up with a snippet you don’t remember storing away, and giving it to a character in a current project.

You see, writers are never off duty. Always some part of us is observing and taking note of the people, sights, sounds and smells we’ll later use in a story. That’s just how it is.

There’s only so much you can learn from online research. To really bring a location to life, you have to be there and feel how it feels. Writers of fantasy or paranormal books have different challenges. For the most part you can’t physically visit the places in your books. But I’ll bet anything that the rainforest glade on Planet Glorious will have its inspiration in some magical place you visited here on earth.

What’s your favourite kind of research? Have you been intrigued enough by an author’s research to want to visit the places she describes? I created a restaurant in the Adelaide Hills, South Australia and had readers asking for its address, as sorry as I was that it’s made up. People also say they’d like to visit Carramer, my South Pacific island kingdom. It’s a fantasy, too, but if you visit Noumea and Hawaii, you’ll see where my inspiration came from. Research is fun and writers are always doing it, whether we know it or not. So look at your hunky guy pictures and dream of your faraway places. For a writer, it’s all in a day’s work.

Valerie

http://www.valerieparv.com

on Twitter @valerieparv

and Facebook

11 amazing things to LOVE about writing… #11ElevenLive

1.  Writers get paid to make things up. All the stuff that got you into trouble as a kid is what publishers will pay you to do now. The more convincing your made-up world, the more successful you’re likely to be.
2. You’re never too old or too young to write. Among the world’s youngest published authors were a four-year-old girl and a six-year-old boy. Among the oldest was Helen Hoover Santmyer, whose book, And Ladies of the Club, came out when she was ninety. My first paid article appeared in the Australian Women’s Weekly when I was fourteen.
3. Nothing you write is set in stone. Give yourself permission to write badly. Get rid of the critic over your shoulder telling you this is crap, you can’t do it etc etc. and simply write. As Nora Roberts says, “You can fix a bad page, you can’t fix a blank page.”
4. You can get away with murder. If somebody seriously annoys you, create inventive ways to kill them in your story. Give them a different name and details, but have fun making sure the bad people in your life get theirs. Ditto the good people. They become your heroes and favourite secondary characters, although we’ll swear any resemblance is coincidental.
5. You can steal and get away with it. Not other people’s words, of course. That’s plagiarism. Don’t do it. Write your own words, but take inspiration from the successful writers you admire. Study their writing to see how they work their word magic.
   

   Who says your author picture has to look like you?

6. You can be famous without the hassle. You don’t see paparazzi camped outside a writer’s door. Even if you’re Stephen King, hardly anybody will know you on sight. I sat beside a woman reading one of my books on a plane. My photo was on the cover, but she didn’t look at me twice as I hugged my secret to myself.
7. You’re working while staring out of a window. It’s hard convincing friends and family of this one, but it’s true. Losing yourself in daydreams and playing “what if?” with interesting concepts is your equivalent of laying foundations for a house.
8. Every cool thing you want to do is research. I learned this after cruising from Cairns to Thursday Island. Deciding to treat the trip purely as vacation, I didn’t record expenses or keep a travel diary, just enjoyed the experience. A year later I used the details in my Harlequin novel, ISLAND OF DREAMS, which was serialised in Woman’s Day magazine.
9. You can live and work anywhere.  I have writer friends in Sweden,  Alaska, Alice Springs, everywhere. We work in jammies, in the garden and in bed. Next October I’m working at Daku Resort in Fiji, leading a writer’s retreat. http://paradisecourses.com/category/writing/
10. Writers need never be bored. Stuck in traffic, in a waiting room, in line at the bank? You can let your thoughts wander, solve a tricky plot point, create a character inspired by the lady in front of you, or imagine spending your next royalty cheque.
11. Writing is the best fun you can have with your clothes on. Writing used to be a solitary business. When you’re deep in putting words on screen, it still is. But thanks to social networking, we can find each other, brainstorm ideas, commiserate over rejections, and celebrate successes. And you get to be part of fun things like #11ElevenLive  a worldwide link-up of artists, writers, film makers and musicians celebrating this once-in-two-hundred-years date.