5 Unexpected Ways Travel Can Improve Your Writing
You will get burned out from writing
No matter what kind of writing you do, your mind can only handle so much trying to cram out words on your computer screen. Like the body, your brain is an organ that also needs breaks from working nonstop.
What if I told you there is a way to reset your creative juices?
Travel
Travel isn’t just for escaping the grind and having a vacation; it also gives your mind a break from monotony.
1. Sharper Observation
When your mind gets used to familiarity, like people, it breeds contempt.
Once this happens, your creativity stops, and writing seems tedious.
The moment you put yourself in a new environment, you jump-start your creativity.
When you travel, your senses are on high alert. New smells, sounds, colors, and cultural quirks force you to notice details. Great writing lives in those small, specific moments.
Travel teaches you to pay attention — and good writers are expert observers
2. Exposure to Diverse Perspectives
Whether it is collecting data or collecting stories, they all come from one thing: human connection.
The best marketers are the ones who can connect with their audience. To connect with the audience, you have to be able to walk a mile in their shoes.
Meeting people from different cultures challenges your assumptions. This helps you write with more empathy, nuance, and authenticity — especially if you’re writing for a global audience or tackling complex themes.
“The pride of the digital age is not just in the possession of innovative tools but the ability to skillfully connect with humans behind them”
― Bernard Kelvin Clive
3. Richer Descriptions
Vivid details in a story make you feel like you are there with the writer.
Travel makes your brain take in all the new mental stimuli in your surroundings, embedding all of the new details in your mind.
New environments give you fresh material to work with: different architecture, landscapes, and local scenes. This enhances your descriptive language and storytelling range, making your writing more vivid and immersive.
Some memories are unforgettable, remaining ever vivid and heartwarming!
Some memories are unforgettable, remaining ever vivid and heartwarming!
4. Stronger Dialogue and Voice
When you travel, you become a global citizen of the world.
When you become a global citizen, you can hear the voices of others. This enables you to think, articulate, and write from another perspective, especially if you are ghostwriting.
Hearing different ways people speak (slang, cadence, tone) helps you create more believable dialogue and diverse character voices — whether you’re writing fiction, essays, or content marketing.
“About play: Play is an important part of finding voice, because it allows us to try on new selves, like costumes, with sanctuary. We can pretend to be, pretend to write as if, without committing. And often play allows us to discover our authentic self. [p. 48]”
― Jill Hackett, Women, Voice, and Writing : How to define, develop, and strengthen your writing voice
5. Mental Flexibility
Expect the unexpected when it comes to travel.
Expecting things to go as planned when traveling will disappoint you. Travel requires a lot of mental agility.
Mental agility helps your writing because there will be days when your mind goes blank and you won’t know what to write.
Travel rarely goes exactly as planned. The ability to adapt and stay curious builds the same mental resilience you need in writing: facing blank pages, pushing through self-doubt, and rewriting with perspective.
“Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.”
— Ray Bradbury
At some point in your writing career, you will need to shake things up a little bit. Why not do it while traveling?