Pebblepup's Writing Den

Finding time to write in our busy lives is hard enough. When you throw travel in the mix, well, that’s even harder. Of course, if you are a passenger on a plane, you can write while in transit. I often write on road trips, when I’m not driving. I have a subscription to Microsoft 365 and it features a dictation function in Word. I have written things while driving by dictating to Word. It’s a good method, but not perfect. I often have to clean up the text when I finish. It’s an option.

Writing on the go requires you to be dedicated and disciplined. You need to plan a writing on the go session in advance of your trip. How you write when you are away from your usual writing location depends on how you write when you are there. I use Word on my laptop. When we go to Florida every January, I sit in the passenger seat of the car with my laptop. I write my journal entry, blog posts, and do whatever tasks I need to do in my writing life. It’s my process in the car. It would be the same on a plane, train, or boat. I would be writing on my laptop. If I were writing with pen, or pencil, and paper, it would be the same. I would have a clipboard, but I would be writing.

If you are driving, writing on the go gets a bit trickier. If you are alone, you can dictate to your phone. If you aren’t alone, you can still dictate to your phone. But you may have conversations added from the other people in the car. That’s a lot of extra clean up that you might not want to do. If you are driving, have something handy to scribble on in rest areas, stoplights or stop sign. You won’t get as much done, but you will achieve something.

The point is, that if you are about to travel and you need to write something important, you need to do a little planning. That’s the best way to achieve your writing goals while traveling. Plans and trains are easy. So is driving, if you aren’t the driver. Take a little time to review your travel plans and decide where and when you can squeeze in some writing time. You might surprise yourself. you might even find you are quite productive. That’s your goal when you attempt to do any writing while on the go. So make your travel and writing plans with confidence. Then you may wind up with something quite useful. Good luck and keep writing.