Travel Writers Online

Caen and Ouistreham Group in WhatsApp Community Have you tried setting-up a WhatsApp Community, yet? If you have been using WhatsApp with work colleagues or with friends for a while, then it is easy to do. A WhatsApp Community is a dialogue space to share an interest. The Community can grow and so you can divide it into Groups. In October 2024 we started a WhatsApp Community called French Travel and Books , and designed a logo of open books in the colours of the French flag: WhatsApp Group Soon, we realised it was a broad topic and so began to create Groups within the Community to share news and ideas for regions and cities. The aim began to form that it would be a space for collecting favourite holiday reading for visitors to these places. I am interested in Ouistreham and Caen because I completed fieldwork in November 2024, and the WhatsApp Group ran live alongside the travel and my stay in the port town.  Fieldwork in Ouistreham During my fieldwork in the town I was drawn to...

Thursday morning, 27th July 2023. The research project on slow tourism for the Channel ports is still very much in Step 1, the Library Stage. The earliest step in our process methodology using the book for travel researchers. In the last few days, though, a literary connection with the city of Caen has begun to emerge. It's exciting enough to report here on Travel Writers Online. Using dialogue journaling a trustworthy link has been established with a fellow blogger, Claude at the blog Livres d'un jour . Claude had published a review of a detective novel, Canicule sanglante (2022) by Pierre Guinot-Delery (b.1949).  The title would translate as The Bloody Heatwave . The review starts like this: " The city of Caen is suffocating under the effect of a heat wave. One morning, the body of the vice-president of the chamber of commerce and business leader is found dead in front of the courthouse." That was enough to make me order a copy from Amazon. It's due to arri...

Preparing for Journaling in the Field This three-step activity for bloggers aims to get you started with your own travel blog writing. It takes you through the design of three posts to your blog. The 3 steps aim to give you direct practice in journaling, making field notes, preparing for fieldwork and keeping a record of your practice for later analysis. You will need notebooks for your fieldnotes. I always have a stock of these Black n' Red. The wire bound spine lets the notebook open flat and the hardback provides support for writing when standing up.  The other learning objectives are to understand how human memory and passing time have been conceptualised and how these can help in your evolving identity as a productive writer. Finally, it is an opportunity to start to think about the literary concepts of the addressee and deixis. Google Blogger is free web logging software with free server space. Please try a Google Blogspot, if you have not already set up your blog with anothe...