AUTHOR EXPERIENCES
ADVENTURES IN WRITING
Author Cecily Blench describes how travel writing, adventure travel, wartime history, family history and intrepid women all fed into her debut novel
Cecily Blench
Among the many things that can be said about the last year, one thing that hasn’t featured much is adventure. For most of us, stuck in our homes and unable to travel, overseas trips – whether short beach holidays or intrepid quests – have been tantalisingly out of reach
I started writing my debut novel The Long Journey Home a few years after returning from the longest trip I’d ever done. I began as a volunteer teacher in Myanmar (Burma) and spent some time exploring, from the dusty streets of Mandalay to the wild beauty of the Shan State, before going on to Cambodia and Thailand. I went to six countries in total, culminating in a trip to Borneo to visit my grandfather’s grave, deep in the jungles of Sarawak. It was the most adventurous thing I’d ever done, and my imagination had been sparked.
The trip had drained my finances and when I returned it was necessary to get my first ‘real’ job, working for a small publisher in London. Neither the salary nor the annual leave were particularly generous, so another long trip was off the cards for some time, although that didn’t stop me dreaming. Instead, I found my escape in books.
Adventure writing is a broad category, and these days appears dominated by ex-military men with stern gazes and khaki trousers, while ‘classic’ travel writing too was the domain of wealthy white men. I love all kinds of travel writing, including the traditional giants such as Patrick Leigh Fermor, Eric Newby, and Paul Theroux, but in my view the most intrepid and incisive travel writing has largely been by women.