Vivian Swift, author Q & A

I was so taken with my recent read, When Wanderers Cease to Roam, that not only did I post a review of it the other day, I also sent an email to the author, Vivian Swift, asking her some questions.

She wrote back, and this is what she had to say:

A lot of people seem to think that traveling and staying home are the opposite of each other. What do you think?

Traveling and staying home are actually the same activity, they are just two different points on the Being Alive Continuum.

Anyone can use time-tested travel tips in their own backyard. For instance, think of all the places in the world that are famous for their sun sets: The Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, Bali, Key West...

The sun that glows with such romance in those exotic locales is the same sun that sets in your own home town.

So go find it: go find the best place in your neighborhood to see a good sun set. Your search, I bet, will take you down streets and into corners of your town that you never would otherwise have explored.

And when you find your very own sun set place, and you take in the way your familiar ground is transformed by this wonderful time of day, part of you will be watching and experiencing the sun set in the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids, or Bali.

In Mark Twain's day, Sweden had the reputation for having the best sun sets in the world. And Mark Twain, himself quite a world traveler, said that Swedish sun sets, like happiness, are every where; but most people are looking the other way.

Don't miss out on the Swedish sun set in your own little world.

Have you gone out and found your very own sun set spot close to home?

I've discovered that the best place to see a sun set is in the parking lot of my local grocery store.

As I'm standing there in the glorious sun-downer display, part of me is breathing the salty air of my own special foreign sun set place . . . on the sea wall in the town of Saint Malo in Brittany, France, for example.

This is the closest I have come to having a transcendental experience.

Travelers have itchy feet. Have you really "ceased to roam" ?

Oh certainly. These days, I never leave home for more than three weeks at a time, maybe once or twice a year. I'm much more interested in processing the data I've collected from having lived on Earth for 53 years.


The traveling I do now if to pursue lines of inquiry I have about "unfinished business": personal and family history and mythology.

In the past five years I've been to Scotland and New Orleans repeatedly. I am always inspired and exhilarated, but I'm always glad to get home.

Is there another book in you?

I'm working on another one. I call it "Travel Tips for Staying Put." It's an illustrated guide for adventuresome homebodies.

Consider this: Emily Dickinson never left her house. Traveling your soul. Now that's the value of staying home.


Images (c) Vivian Swift from the book When Wanderers Cease to Roam.

Questions Answered: Submitting Funny Signs

One of the reasons, perhaps, that the book, Caution Funny Signs Ahead, so captured my attention is that in the course of my travels, I too have snapped some funny sign photos.

Could one of my funny sign pictures make it into a future funny sign compilation?

It wasn't long before I was pulling up image after image from my own digital picture library, trying to find the funniest of all my funny sign shots.

Should I submit the billboard filled with little naked men that I captured somewhere in the Czech countryside?

Or maybe the picture I took of a sign inside a fancy Vietnamese hotel elevator advertising the culinary "words" of art prepared by the chef in the lobby restaurant.

I did submit a picture to RoadTrip America's funny sign collection, although neither of these were my final selection. I guess we'll all just have to wait and see if the one I sent makes the cut.

In an attempt to improve my odds, I figured I'd quiz the collection's co-editor, Mark Sedenquist, about the submission process. Here's what he had to say:

How long have you been collecting funny sign pictures from RoadTrip America readers?

Roughly, since 1996.

How often is a new funny sign picture posted?

Every week. You can see them here.

To date, do you know how many images have been submitted to RoadTrip America?

The total online collection now stands at 466 published Funny Sign photos, but of course that will change next week.

At the present time, we have about 100 images waiting in the “on-deck” circle for eventual inclusion in the collection.

We’ve had over 1600 pictures submitted to us, but we’ve only accepted about 300 of those into the collection. We verify the authenticity of every photo and many do not pass our tests.

What do you think drives travelers to snapping pictures of funny signs and then submit them to your collection?

I think they do it for the same reason we do it – to share moments of whimsy and humor with a greater audience.

What do you like best about editing the funny signs collection?

Writing captions that are not the obvious first choice. We prefer captions that require a little thought when viewing the images.

We spend about 5 hours each week nominating the new featured sign, writing the caption and preparing it for publication on RTA.

What guidelines do you have for photo submissions?

We prefer 300 dpi, jpeg, 600 x 600 pixels as a minimum, but with the advent of cellular phone cameras, we often accept smaller images.

Once a picture is accepted, it could be anywhere between five days to a year before it is posted online.

We don't post them in the order we get them. Instead, we select each week's photo by how funny it strikes us at the particular time we're choosing pictures.

Hmmm. I can only hope my own submitted sign strikes them as funny as it did me!

Do you have your own funny sign to submit?

You'll find the submission guidelines here.

Journeys and Journaling

Today’s entry is somewhat of a departure from my regular musings. Instead of keeping track of my own life, I’ll be keeping track of someone else’s: Nicole Graham.

Nicole Graham is an Aussie who has been living in Hong Kong for more than three years. She moved there with her husband (a fellow Aussie) when he received a job offer with Dragonair, a Hong Kong-based airline.

Ex-pat life agrees with Nicole and her husband and they are counting on another 20 plus years in Hong Kong. While her hubby is jetting to and fro, Nicole has forged a career in the city as a personal development coach.

Most recently, she has formed a business partnership with an artist named Tara Spicer (yet another Aussie) to create and produce writing journals and meditation CDs especially for women. Their business is called Journals for Empowerment.

In November 2007, they released their first journal, Journal for the Modern Goddess, along with three meditation CDs. Now they are on a virtual book tour, taking the story behind their journal to blogs all over the world (including this stop today).

For Nicole, travel is part of the story behind the journal as she is an avid traveler who has always enjoyed writing about her experiences while on the road.

As travel and journal keeping are two of my interests, I was eager to ask Nicole her own history of journeys and journaling.

What are some key lessons you've learned through travel?

I had talked about backpacking around Europe for years, but I kept putting it off. I was waiting for a friend to be ready to travel with me. But then I realized that if I kept waiting, the travel opportunity might pass me by. If I was going to go, I had to do it for me, not for anyone else.

So at 25, I backpacked around Europe by myself. Many of my friends were not sure if I could do it because I’m not an extrovert. I tend to be an observer. I’d rather not be the centre of attention.

But the experience of travelling by myself made me step out of my shell and make the effort to meet people. I had to, otherwise I would have had a very boring time.

I learnt that when I set my mind to do something, that I can actually achieve it and it isn’t really that hard.

Sure there may be a few hurdles or hiccups, but generally the Universe will assist you in achieving your dreams.

I also learnt that when you travel, people are more than willing to sit and talk or show you around. Many people are proud of their city or town and want to show it off to visitors who are willing to spend a little time with them.

Did your previous travel experiences help prepare you for living abroad in a new culture?

I was a little nervous about the move but it was more due to the unknown.

I think if I hadn’t backpacked around Europe by myself, I may have been more nervous. Achieving that trip really gave me the knowledge that I’d be ok. I’m not afraid to explore on my own or try something new.

Through travel, many women learn about themselves and feel empowered. Your journal is also designed to help women learn about themselves and feel empowered. How do you think keeping a journal can help further a woman’s sense of self-knowing and empowerment while she is traveling?

Journaling while travelling encourages personal growth because as you express yourself, you can integrate your life experiences, your travel experiences and your learnings, which in turn allows you to move forward in discovering who you really are.

Also, journaling while travelling can help you better know yourself because it helps you create awareness of your beliefs and opinions. It also helps you identify your values.



What is your journaling philosophy?

Don’t be afraid to just write. The journal is your journal. Take pleasure in being able to write what you want, when you want and use it as a way to express who you are.

Do you journal every day?

I like to journal but I don’t journal every day, and this was one of the motivations for developing our journal.

I find that many journals are dated. This makes me feel pressure to write daily, whereas our journal has been set up for women to journal whenever they like.

I journal based on how I’m feeling. If I find myself too much in my own head, I spend time writing to get whatever it is out of my mind. I try to open my heart to releasing it.

I also journal when I travel. I love to write about my experiences, the places I’ve been to, how I felt throughout the day and what observations I’ve made about the culture.

Photo:

Nicole loves cats big and small, so chilling with a monk-reared tiger at Thailand's Tiger Temple was a definite travel highlight. "He loved his chin being scratched and loved to suck on your fingers!" she wrote.

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The Journals for the Modern Goddess is a hard-bound writing journal filled with unique colored art, inspirational quotes and guided questions and retails for $34.95 AUD including GST.

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The next stop on this virtual book tour is at The Road to Infinite Bliss. Nicole will be interviewed specifically about the creation of the Journal for the Modern Goddess.

A Word On Virtual Book Tours

In the past month, the concept of a "virtual book tour" has crossed my path three different times from three different directions.

What's a virtual book tour?

An author, instead of traveling from city to city to talk about her book, takes to the Internet and goes on tour via numerous blogs.

The author arranges a long list of bloggers who agree to write about the book. Sometimes, the blogger simply reviews the book. Other times the blogger hosts a Q & A with the author.

If the author plans her virtual tour well, her name and book title will cut a wide swath through cyber space, stopping at blogs penned from different countries with different themes and different audiences. In this way, the author can cover quite a bit of ground and garner quite a bit of buzz without ever leaving her home.

It makes sense that the traditional book tour has turned toward the cyber path. A real-live book tour is expensive -- the airfare, the hotels, the eating out.

A door-to-door book tour is also unpredictable. A book store might advertise an event, but there is never a guarantee as to how many readers will show up. Enough to warrant the plane ticket?

Besides, once a Q & A is posted online, it's there for any potential reader to google and find, whether it's that day, a day later or a full year down the line.

And anyway, bloggers have been reviewing their reads online since blogging began. Is a virtual book tour so different?

I wonder. A virtual book tour is certainly more "controlled" than the random reviewing by Joe-blogger out there.

I guess I'm going to have my chance to find out, as in a few days this space will be a stop on a virtual book tour.

Photo - illustration © Peter Sis from the book "House of Paper."