Road Trip!

On the road again... something something on the road again...

Hello readers!  Today starts a road trip down to the beautiful state of North Carolina.  However, the blog never stops and I thought I would give some tips on how to write when on a road trip.  I'm going to list some that you can do alone and with others, but let's get down with some basic tech you're going to need.  You'll either need a smartphone with an ability to record your voice, a recorder, or pencil and paper if you can write while someone else drives.  Do not use the write down method if you are driving as you are distracted and could harm yourself and others.

That's said, let's get down to business.

1. Talk your story like you're telling it to another person.  This is best if you're alone in the car because you can just turn on the recorder and talk.  You can either write a chapter through voice or talk through a plot point or whatever you want to do.  Just keep an eye on your battery use or the memory if you're using a recorder along with the battery.  Also, if you have a willing passenger in the car, you could ask them to help you talk through a plot problem you're having with the results that you can listen through later.  This does lead to more work down the road, but that can be solved with using a computer program such as Dragon or another dictation software.

2. Say you don't have a current project and you have someone else in the car with you.  What you could do is decide on a prompt, hit record, and go back and forth with telling a story.  With this, if you decide to publish or share the story, you should ask the other person if you can with giving them credit before starting.  If the person doesn't want to give credit, it can still be a fun exercise to get through boredom.  You just can't use the story that comes out of it in the publishing sense.

3. If you're stuck in the seat on a family road trip, or even on a bus or plane where someone else is driving, you could pull out your phone and open a notepad type program to write.  This is best when you can't pull out your laptop to write and you've got an itch to write down an idea or the next chapter of your novel.  This is also when the pen and paper idea, if you can write in the car, would help you as well.  You could also make it a game, such as the idea in #2 but with passing the phone back and forth, but make sure you get the okay to use their writing and give them credit for it too.

So those are my three tips for writing while in the car while having a bit of fun.  What do you like to do when you're in the car but want or need to write, readers?  Do you use a variation of the above or do you do something else entirely?

Until next time, keep on writing!