/lit/ - Literature

>>16894925
It's too late for this advice for this trip, but keeping daily notes will not just keep your facts straighter but also give you regular writing practice. I'd recommend trying that now while not travelling, so you have it as a habit when you go somewhere else.
You might also want to define why you found the other efforts you made shit. Unless you want the advice to solve that to be "be less shit". We don't know if you're complaining about writing too much or too little, too pretentious or too dry, with too few details, or with too many grammatical errors. All you're giving us is "quite shit", which could be anything.

>>16894955
Yeah I really should have kept notes, I'll start doing it in day to day life to get into the practice that's a good idea

Well I found it to be the case that I would just write along the lines of
today I did 'x' and it was 'y', after that I did 'w' and it was interesting because 'z'

I also find that my choice of words to describe things is very limited, I think it's because I don't want to make it too "cheesy" but the result it a lot of things are just described as "nice" or "interesting"

I just don't feel I can capture what I'm trying to say or how I felt effectively with words though maybe that comes with practice

Retrospective travel diaries can be hard to write. If they’re a straightforward narrative they can be boring to write and boring to read. When I take notes while traveling I try to include more random thoughts I have or interesting local lore so I can liven up the full narrative when I write it.
Bryson has a masterful formula; he’s worth studying.

>>16895014
It's part practice, part thinking. Pick out the things that make something interesting but also be aware of your own emotions. People don't read travel writing because it's a dry description of objects and sites to visit. They read it because they want to see the experience the person had.
For that, the facts do help place where the experience is happening, but the personal details are what makes it come alive. This also helps in experiencing places better. Instead of "I'm going here because it's a famous building", you start thinking about things like "I'm going to have an experience I can't foresee, and I'm going to find out about myself and the world through that". When you say "interesting" or "nice", all you're showing is your noncommittal stance to everything. You should have words like "terrifying" and "drunken" and "horrific" alongside "beautiful" and "delicious" and "nubile". Because all good human experiences are about those things whether you're in a war zone or a bird sanctuary.

>>16895043
This is a good point, I think next time I do it I'll do it while I'm there
I'll check out Bryson thanks for the suggestion

That’s because you are a boring person deep down. It’s not your fault, you just don’t have anything worthwhile to say because you either have a boring worldview or a boring day to day life. You also don’t read as much as you should.
Read some travel books by a famous author or something

>>16895057
Yeah I'll start being more adventurous with my wording regardless of the situation, I guess I was just too consciously trying to avoid the general travel blogger trope of describing everything as incredible or amazing
Don't know why I was trying to do that given I'm the only one reading it

>>16895069
That's true but I hoped you wouldn't figure it out

>>16895140
I think you forgot that a lot of stuff is not sensational. It's actually quite rare.
It's like when I ate an underbaked croissant at a cafe, and wondered if it was just me or if it was the croissant. And then all of a sudden the baker comes out to stop me from eating the thing but it's too late, I ate it all.
Ended up getting half a dozen properly made croissants as an apology.

That is not something that happens every day.

More typical would be 'went to have a coffee at a cafe with a croissant. Decided to put more butter on croissant when eating, bad mistake, too much butter.'

>>16895140
>Don't know why I was trying to do that given I'm the only one reading it
Then you can be brutally honest and only hurt your own feelings, fren. Seriously, it is a great way to find out about yourself. People who think everything is amazing are also very boring. Your range of emotions everyday might change between being irritated with the taxi, surprised by the lunch, choked and scared by the traffic, and relieved by the bus schedule. It doesn't have to be an earth shattering emotion, but there does have to be some emotion for you to be having a connected experience. [I mean real human connections with the exterior world, not "connected experience" as in "please like subscribe and click notification button"]