Planning, for travelling and for writing - Jo Carroll
It's that time of year again. The nights are drawing in and our thoughts are turning towards the winter. Which means my thoughts are turning towards a winter trip. Where shall I go this year? I've long since abandoned any soul-searching about why I go away in the winter, leaving the rest of you in the dark and the cold. Just as I've long since stopped trying to work out why I write. I just do. And researching the trip has writing parallels as well. Firstly, to choose a continent: I want to go to Africa as it's the only continent apart from Antarctica that I've not visited on my own. (Would I explore a new genre for the same reason? Possibly.) Africa is huge. So I need to narrow things down a bit. Firstly: I'll stick to sub-Saharan Africa. That's still huge. So the next exclusion is anywhere obviously unsafe. In spite of all the hoo-ha, a trawl through the Foreign Office website and a couple of travel forums show that that most of Africa is fairly safe...