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does foreign travel make you a better writer?
what is about immersing yourself in a completely foreign place?
Hemingway traipsed through Europe and came up with his (arguably) most notable works — The Sun Also Rises, A Moveable Feast, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls.
An entire generation of writers (suitably dubbed “The Lost Generation”) left the United States to make their home in Paris, gifting us with works from Fitzgerald and E.E. Cummings.
They’re just examples of times long past. Nowadays, it’s even easier to travel or live in a different country — you can shut yourself away in a cabin in Switzerland, a little beachside villa in Italy, a farmhouse in New Zealand, an apartment in Montreal.
You can walk amongst the rushing faces of China, dodge the vibrant mopeds in Hanoi, climb ancient ruins in Cambodia, find yourself at the top of Machu Picchu.
Is it the experience that makes you more inspired? Being absorbed in a place entirely unfamiliar than your own?
Or is it getting away from the humdrum of regular life? Sitting in a hotel, hostel, cafe in a foreign country, sipping your coffee that tastes better than any coffee you’d drink in the US, typing away at your keyboard or scribbling furiously in your notebook?
