![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/coffee-shop-writer.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nBeing a writer affects us in all sorts of ways. Although it\u2019s true that to some extent, all writers whatever their genre, are life\u2019s observers, I have several writer friends who border on the obsessive. They may claim that they find a busy caf\u00e9 the perfect place to write, but they seem to spend much of their time simply people watching. Needless to say, lockdown proved an unproductive time for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/making-notes.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s a well-known maxim that a writer should never leave the house without a pen and notebook in their pocket to jot down the odd \u2018great\u2019 idea. These days, of course the mobile phone has become the essential tool. Not only can you dictate your thoughts or note ideas or perfect phrases in a text to your email, it\u2019s also possible to take a photo of something you find inspirational. That way, you can recall every detail when you are back at the keyboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I confess, I\u2019m still a notebook addict. Whenever we go on holiday, I have a new A6 ring notebook in which I scribble away on every trip. It began when I started my Fiona Mason Travel Mystery series. Following the itinerary that Fiona and her passengers would take was always the first step in my research for each novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since the end of last year, now that the cruise companies have started up again, I\u2019ve been spending much of my time preparing cruise talks. At the end of last year, I was lucky enough to have three cruises \u2013 one giving lectures about the history and things to see and do in all the ports on the itinerary and two in the East Mediterranean giving lectures on the history of the areas we were visiting. I\u2019ve recently returned from a great cruise to the Canaries just before Easter. Although none of these cruises provided material for my novels, I still spent every trip off the ship with my notebook in hand. I have so much more information to add to my port lectures for the Canaries, they will need a complete rewrite when I do the trip again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not that my last cruise didn\u2019t give me the chance to do a bit of extra could-be-useful-in-a future-novel research. One of my fellow lecturers worked in the police force on the forensic side of things. He was instrumental in setting up a method of identifying footprints. Another lecturer was a crime writer! She was talking about writing crime.\u00a0 We had several conversations about research. It\u2019s hard to find someone else who appreciates the lengths we crime writers need to go to get our research spot on. Her first novel in the series about a make-up artist is set in Las Vegas and one of her characters needed to get rid of a body. In one of her lectures, she showed a photo of her trying to dig a grave in the desert. After an hour\u2019s hard digging her hole was two-foot square and about six inches deep! Back to the drawing board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m currently busy preparing my presentations for a Greenland cruise later in the year. I\u2019m not sure that Aunt Jessica and Harry would tackle that itinerary but never say never. One thing\u2019s certain \u2013 I shall be making notes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Being a writer affects us in all sorts of ways. Although it\u2019s true that to some extent, all writers whatever their genre, are life\u2019s observers, I have several writer friends who border on the obsessive. They may claim that they find a busy caf\u00e9 the perfect place to write, but they seem to spend much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,19,158,32,85],"tags":[53,39,162],"class_list":{"0":"post-2499","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-crime","7":"category-general-interest","8":"category-mystery-novels","9":"category-research-2","10":"category-travel","11":"tag-cruises","12":"tag-holiday","13":"tag-writing-obsessions","14":"entry","15":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2505,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499\/revisions\/2505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Canaries.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Greenland.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n