In this week’s episode, JP and Crys are joined by special guest Kevin Tumlinson from Draft2Digital to discuss all things travel and writing.
Show Notes
Take Off Your Pants by Libbie Hawker
Transcript
Crys: Hello friends. Welcome to the Write Away Podcast. This is episode 61 and it is September 19th, 2021, as we’re recording. We have a special guest with us. So as normal, we have me, Crys Cain…
JP: JP Rindfleisch.
Kevin: And Kevin Tumlinson.
Crys: From Draft2Digital. We are at the Career Author Summit this weekend and JP and I had already decided that this week we are going to talk about how travel has influenced our writing. And when I realized Kevin was here, I was like, oh, you also live in a van. You probably have thoughts.
Kevin: I do have one or two.
Crys: Excellent.
Kevin: When we got on the road, that was the major thing I had to consider. There’s a lot that goes into my work, both for Draft2Digital and for my personal business.
But writing is the thing that has to be done every single day. You texted me earlier. I was in the middle of writing and didn’t answer. That’s the way my mornings go. And yeah, it’s been interesting to work that in, but it’s also been one of the more rewarding experiences I’ve had because everywhere we go is an opportunity to do a little bit of research, meet some characters, get some inspiration.
Crys: Yeah. I’ve talked quite a bit in the last few weeks about the difficulties. I haven’t written for a month. Because I had a deadline, met that, and then took a week or two off, broke the momentum. And now figuring out how to work in this space with my five-year-old without that pressing deadline and instituting those new routines is proving challenging.
Kevin: Yes, so I have my Franken method, writing when things are busy. Like travel days are the hardest days. And so I give myself some grace and say, I’m going to write 500 words today. That’s like my bare minimum. And cause normally my minimum word count is typically going to be like 2,500 minimum. But I’ll do, 5,000, 6,000 a day if I get on a roll. But 500 is that, okay, we had to pack up, I had to get everything put away and we had to get moving so 500 words it is.
And sometimes those words are written while I’m standing in line somewhere using my phone. So I’ve got that, the iPad, the laptop, I’ve got all these various tools. And the big joke with me and my wife, Kara, is that I’ve always got something to write with at all times. So that’s how I work it all in.
JP: So when you started van life, cause I’m going to assume you weren’t living in a van your entire life, what was that transition period like for you? How long did it take for you to find that routine and what kind of trials and errors did you go through?
Crys: First of all, how long have you been in the van?
Kevin: We’ve been in the van for two years. A couple of years before we got into the van, we were in a full-size like 38-foot motorcoach for two years. Very different experience, but some of the same challenges apply. And, I went from, we had this huge house. I had like a hundred-thousand-dollar audio production studio, whereas with the podcast, we had my office and I kinda miss my office. My office was this grand space.
So I did have to adjust my routines because I didn’t have a door to close. That was the biggest thing. There was no way I was getting off on my own and just writing. And I couldn’t even do the take off and go to a cafe thing because my wife is in the same vehicle with me all the time.
So one of the ways that we adapted was, I have a set of AirPods, that’s my door. And she knows this and she knocks on that door a lot, but she knows that that’s focused time, that’s writing time. And so that’s one method I’ve used. That write anywhere method is another. Sometimes we get lucky and we stay someplace where there is a space within walking distance, and I’ve become very flexible about where I write.
I’ve had to become flexible about when I write. Like I don’t even always get to write at the same time every day anymore. Sometimes there are days where you just have to take care of whatever’s happening. We have to relocate a lot. That’s another one. So one of the things that we have done, she’s been very good about, she knows my temperament and she knows that I need to be fed inspiration. And so one of the things that she’ll do is pick out a spot for us to park for the day. And we do a lot of parks, national parks, state parks, we’ve parked along every bay I can think of. And that’s where we spend our day doing the work. Yeah, it’s a little different than having my space I rolled out to every morning 15 feet away or whatever. But it’s been productive. I’ve written several books since we’ve been on the road.
Crys: Now, you mentioned, and this is the part that I’m really interested in because I went through a phase on this trip where I was so overloaded, and I think a lot of it was just learning how to be in a van, and like how to figure out where we’re going to park next, and when we need to fill propane and water.
And all of that filled my brain for about the first month. And then the inspiration finally started flowing. So what has shown up in your work from the places you’ve been that you really enjoyed and really excited about and you feel like it’s really deep into your writing?
Kevin: I admire that you have had to do all those things. Cause I have a partner who does it all for me. That has been the only way I can function. I don’t know what kind of mess I would be if I had to plan all the stops. I know where I’d be, I’d be sleeping in parking lots all the time. She doesn’t like to do that. So I guess it’s self-preservation on her part.
So the things that show up in my work, locations show up a lot. The latest book featured Boston, which we spent some time in Boston. And I knew that was going to happen. So I actually started writing that book before we got there and was able to go and experience and get some of the energy of the place and work that into the book. So locations are big.
The local, sometimes history of a location, but what I look for a lot is that little story, the local legend kind of thing cause my books are thrillers. And I write different series, but one of my mainstays is archeological thrillers, and I have gravitated a lot towards archeology in the U.S. I’ve had my character say this, but you think of the phrase ancient America as it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t work. But there’s a lot more history here than you think.
Crys: That’s one of the things as we’ve been traveling. What is the indigenous history like that I can look at or study in the areas that I’m in? The west is especially bright with that.
Kevin: Yeah. And I have this obsession. So I do a podcast with Nick Thacker, he’s another thriller author, called, we’ll shorten it to Stuff That’s Real. It’s called Stuff That’s Real, You Didn’t Know it Was Real, But It Also Is Cool. And I’m really impressed I remember it.
We talk about the stuff that’s real, things that you don’t expect to exist. And we’ve discovered that we both have a passion for caverns and caves and underground complexes and things like that. They are themes that show up in our work all the time. You’d be amazed at how many of those there are in the US, and particularly in the Northeast. Like I had no idea. In Kentucky, there’s the Mammoth Caverns, right? That’s the largest cavern system in at least North America, if not the entire Americas. There are all these different caves and underground complexes and things like that. And I had no idea any of that stuff was there. You’ll be walking through a street in a given city and there’s an entire other city below you and you had no idea.
JP: So when you go about your travels and you discover these places, how are you discovering them? And I’m coming from a perspective of other people who may not have van life, but are traveling, and they want to experience what you experience. How could they do that?
Kevin: Even before we did van life, I traveled a lot for Draft2Digital and for myself as an author. I go to a lot of conferences and even before I was doing van life, I was still using those trips for that kind of research. And one of the biggest things, it sounds kind of cliche, but you start talking to people. Like, I’d go find the hole in the wall out of the way diner or coffee shop or whatever, and just start chatting people up.
And I’m a blatant self-promoter, so I say, Hey, I’m an author and I’m looking at town and I wanted to see what’s interesting here. And what’s really fun is you can tell the people who are from the area and the people who are imports to the area, because the imports only give you the stuff like, there’s a rack of activities and things here in the hotel, you can go pick one of those up and go see a haunted mansion or whatever. They’ll tell you that stuff. But the people who were born and raised there, like you start picking their brain and suddenly they’re telling you about this story they heard when they were a kid about this particular house down the street or whatever. And so you start finding local legends that way.
But I also, I do pick up those little cards and go see the sights. As you’re driving around in particular, like my wife and I will spot a historical marker or something. And so we’ll stop and read that and get an idea what’s going on there. And then you go on Google and you start looking up more and then that sort of cascades into more and more research. So really, I guess the answer is you just keep your eyes open for the opportunity.
Crys: I’m going to ask you, because I know that from what I’ve read of your stuff, a lot of your work picks up a lot of its atmosphere from how you’re describing it. So for you, how much of that has been from places you’ve visited versus more of your artistic aestheticness?
JP: I would say that for me, like I grew up in a small town. I just had a lot of different, weird aesthetics because I don’t know why, but Wisconsin just has very unique towns. So I’m very like used to just having this strange, drastic difference. And more recently, and when I was growing up, whenever we went places, my father liked to not necessarily take the highway, he liked taking the back roads and traveling through strange towns. So like for one of my travels for work, I decided to take the back roads. And I passed through Galena, Illinois, which is like the coolest place ever.
It was just a huge historical-like town in the middle of nowhere. Also there’s a goat yoga thing that I keep passing by and I’m really interested in what’s going on there. But it’s just, it’s that kind of stuff. Like I like taking the back roads so I can see the unique stuff.
Crys: My work is very character focused. That’s like where my exploration and my joy is. So as I was going through the west and feeling so out of place because it is desert, it is dry it is rocks. And on top of that, they are also in a drought, so it’s extra dry. And for me, it prompted just a lot of thoughts of, this doesn’t feel like home.
Why do places as disparate as upstate New York, Tennessee and Costa Rica have all felt like home, but then I come out here and I’m like, oh no, this is alien. And then that further prompts, what feels like home to my characters when they are nowhere near home? What are the places that call to them? What are the things that make them feel very outside of their bounds? And so I’ve been having a lot of those thoughts as I’ve been traveling in these different places and seeing what emotions is this prompting in me? What emotions would similar situations prompt to my characters? What would someone from this kind of desert area feel like in the jungles of Costa Rica?
Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. That sort of fish out of water, alien landscape kind of thing. So I’m an introvert, but I consider myself a high functioning introvert. And so I force myself to talk to people. And being an introvert actually I think makes you more inquisitive in a way because you want the attention on them and not on you, basically. Which you wouldn’t think by knowing me, most people would never guess that about me.
But I like to meet like the old timers.
Crys: The old liar’s table.
Kevin: That’s exactly the right way to put it because that group, it’s like a gold mine for ideas and character. And I’m a very character driven writer as well. In fact, nobody’s pointed it out yet, but if you remove the setting and the artifacts and everything else in the story and just left the characters, it’d be the same book. There’s virtually no difference. So I like meeting those guys. And then you get their perspective on the world and it’s those contrasts that actually become the character to me. I meet this guy and he’s telling me all about, talk politics with people and you learn so much. It can be an uncomfortable conversation, but you can learn so much about them and also about where they are from those uncomfortable conversations.
Sometimes you just got to leave your own viewpoint and ego at the door and open up and let them just tell you whatever’s coming out of your mouth. Even if it’s like racist garbage sometimes, you learn so much that you can actually take and use in your book. And you have to remember too, not every human is going to be black or white about anything. And so your characters shouldn’t be either. Picking up some local viewpoint and aesthetic can make your books feel much more real and make them much more driven for the reader.
Crys: I carry my pocket extroverts with me so that they can go make friends and bring them back to me.
Kevin: Little daemons who go off and do the work and then come back.
Crys: The kiddo and my friend Priscilla, like they are just quintessential extroverts. And so like I just sit in the van until they’ve established the connection. And then I move into the space.
Kevin: We have a tiny dog named Mini, and she is a Chihuahua terrier and she’s white. So she’s a very unusual and very energetic little dog and everyone adores her. We were in Plymouth and I don’t think we could get three feet before someone had to bend down and pet Mini and tell us how cute she was. And those are great opportunities. I guess the moral of that story is, find that resource that you can fall back on that will get people to come to you.
Crys: Introverts have to find our tactics because it expends a lot of energy to just go up to someone often and be like, Hey, you don’t know me, but I need you to talk to me. But if we get them to initiate, far easier.
Kevin: Right? Exactly. Also it’s kind of awkward to say things like, you need to talk to me.
Crys: Our friend Marianne Hansen is delightful in all ways. And she is one of those people, extreme extrovert, who will meet a person and then immediately start asking them the deepest, awkward questions and get answers.
Kevin: Yeah, I envy people like that, and I have few people in my life that are like that, but my wife and I are not like that.
And we get into a little bit of an introvert feedback loop and we become hermit like sometimes. So the van life thing was a big step and I was very surprised. I suggested all this stuff and it was shot down, and then my wife appears in my office door one day and says, I think we should sell the house and go on the road full time.
And I could tell she’d had a moment, because she knew I just wanted that. I was just obsessed with it. I have been most of my life. And I used to do these epic long road trips when I was a teenager and in my twenties where I would pack up in my 1983 Ford LTD. We called mine the Dragon Wagon. Immense backseat that you could just almost stretch out in, but you mostly slept on your side. And that’s how I slept my way across the country for a while. And did a lot of writing and photography and art and just did that.
Once you do something like that, like you can’t not do it. It just becomes part of your soul. And the writing benefits from that, because not only are you having an experience, which all authors draw upon, but you’re finding out things about yourself. Like you find out what you’re capable of. And like my characters all share certain characteristics. One of those is just being resourceful.
And in fact, one of my characters, I have a female protagonist who’s the most restorable person in the universe. I can’t imagine her failing at anything really, but I sure try. I sure try to make her fail. But all of that comes from those experiences. If you’ve had to sleep in a truck stop parking lot in the back of a Ford LTD for a night and figure out how you’re going to shower and use the bathroom and eat a meal or whatever with 10 bucks in your pocket, you become resourceful. And so I think that’s one of the reasons why all my characters reflect that.
JP: I’ve been talking with my partner about potentially doing more van life and travels. And so it’s really fascinating to hear that just because it sounds very similar that your partner was like, I don’t really want to do this and then one day shows up and is like, Hey, I’m interested.
Kevin: I should say though, there are caveats. The compromise for my wife and I was, I would be the guy sleeping in the back of a car. No problem. I’ve done it, and I could get by. Or best case for me, I was thinking we’ll get like a camper on my pickup or a slide in or something or we’ll convert a van ourselves or whatever.
I’m okay with roughing it. She is not. And so the caveat was, these are the features it had to have, and occasionally we’re going to stay in hotels, and we’ll stay in hotels. And she doesn’t like to get off the beaten path as much as I do. So there’s a compromise there, and it was frustrating for me at first, but now I realize that compromise also adds to the layers of the experience.
So if you’re going to do it, just know that he’s probably not thinking of it the same way you are. Look for the middle road.
Crys: I absolutely snitched on his partner though, because JP’s been talking about this for a while and then his partner messaged me, I don’t know, a month ago, and he’s like, I need to convince JP that we need a van.
And I was like, dude…
JP: Don’t need to convince me.
It’s been really fun, I shouldn’t say that, but it’s been an interesting aspect of COVID and learning that the day job doesn’t need to be physically located.
Kevin: It changed the universe.
JP: And especially for me, I always thought that I was going to be in an office job with the current field that I’m in. And now learning, basically, no one cares anymore, I’m more open to that concept. What would you say to someone who is either starting out or in a position like me who is like maybe a couple of months out, but really wants to do the travel life?
Kevin: Do the travel life? I can’t recommend it highly enough.
I think everyone should travel. The quote, I think it’s from Mark Twain, is that travel is fatal to prejudice. The funny thing was, I more or less always had a portable career. And so I could always pick up and go. Even before I was an author, I was a freelance copywriter and I could still do my work. And I always insisted that I had to have a portable career. My wife was always locked into the office space.
So when it came time for her to make that decision, we had to work to get her mobile. And I could tell a lot of this stuff stresses her out. Like she wanted a very traditional sort of life and this is not traditional. If you’re wanting to get into it, the first thing I would do is say find a way to just start taking some little trips.
I was talking to a guy in Pennsylvania and he’s never been in an RV in his life. And he came to me and said, Hey, we’ve rented this big, huge RV, and we’re going to go boondock somewhere for about a week. And I’m like, here’s what I would do. And he did it.
At first it was like, I don’t think he was thinking about everything. Like you’re going to boondock, how much water does the thing have? What about managing waste and things like that? Have you thought about it? So there’s a lot to consider. So what I always recommend, especially if you’re thinking about buying like a vehicle or something, go rent one and go spend as much time as you’re able to in one trip, because some people can only manage a weekend with a day job or whatever. If you’re thinking of going full-time on the road, try to get something and see what it’s like to live and work out of that vehicle a week a month, whatever.
It’s like everything else, you’re going to practice. And you start to figure out. Like we made huge mistakes when we first started. Buying that big RV is like we were just trying to transfer our house to something on wheels. And what we ended up with was we were miserable.
That RV, 10 times the space we have in the van and we were more cramped than we are in the van because we tried to carry it all with us. I guess it comes down to, you should assess what is actually important to you, what do you actually want with you? And it’s not necessarily about being minimalist but it is about cutting back on what you carry around in life. That’s kind of a rambling answer, but somewhere in there is truth. I promise.
JP: You hit something there though. And like you said, it’s not necessarily minimalism, but it’s getting the appropriate level of things that you need. Did you have any resources or anything that you would recommend that someone could look at to reassess what their needs are?
Kevin: I’m obsessed with YouTube. If you go on YouTube and type almost any question, you’ll find more answers than you can probably take in a week. But I started following people, not only van lifers and RVers, I can never remember his name, I think it’s Matthew Devale, I think. The minimalist guy.
He even did a documentary on Netflix called Minimalism. And I started following people who were doing things that I want to do and seeking out their advice when I could. Same way I got into writing actually. I got into writing it practically birth, but same way I got into publishing and indie publishing. I sought out the people who were doing it in whatever venue they were hanging out in. Podcasts and YouTube were my go tos. So my recommendation is find the medium that you’re comfortable with that will allow you to have access to people who are doing what you want to do. And just take note.
I spent months watching every YouTuber who was in a van. And most of them would talk about their builds, so I was obsessed with wanting to build the van. That did not end up happening because whatever, finances and other things, it was just smarter for us to buy one. But you really do need to spend the time, like we jumped into things and just made so many mistakes upfront. And it cost us thousands and thousands of dollars that we could have put to better use somewhere else. That’s also part of the process. Like you’re going to make mistakes, you’re going to bring something you think you can’t live without and turns out you don’t need it at all.
Crys: I think in everything, whether it’s writing and publishing, or going on the road, especially Americans, but everyone to some degree, gets so obsessed with getting things right the first time. And that’s absolutely impossible.
Kevin: That’s absolutely true. Now, that’s actually writing advice I give all the time is that we were trained in grade school that it has to be perfect.
That’s why so many people stress out over writing. Like I made a grammar mistake, I’m crap, I’ve got to throw it all away and start over. As if you have to draw that thing perfectly the first time or write that thing perfectly the first time. It’s just ridiculous. Because life is about editing, and I fought that by the way, for like nearly 40 years. I hated editing of any kind.
Now I’m looking at life and I’m thinking, editing is actually the heart of my life. What do I take out? What do I put in? How do I reshape this? How do I make this better? And it’s not just the writing, like that philosophy has spilled over into every aspect of my life and van life has just accentuated all that. Like travel has just highlighted the fact that you’re not going to be perfect. You don’t have to be perfect. Imperfection is the story.
So that’s what it’s really all been about. Karen and I have had conversations and I come up with little quippy van life sayings all the time that I’m eventually going to put on t-shirts or something, but all our best trips have been wrong turns. And that’s just the truth in life.
But it’s all applicable. It’s like travel is a microcosm of life. Once you start traveling, you start realizing you were ignoring this in your life all along. We’re building a home. Like we’re going to get off the road. Now, it’s taking forever and we don’t know when that’s gonna be. But we’re flexible, right? So we can stay on the road for years. It’s not going to hurt us. But the point isn’t, we’re done and we’re getting off the road, the point is that’s another chapter of our life. We’re going to do a little different than we did before.
And we’re still going to have the van, we’re still going to travel. We’re already making plans. Like two years now, where do we want to be? And I’m not a planner, but it’s more of the setting your way and correcting course as you go.
Crys: Yeah, it’s about seven years that I’ve been pretty extremely minimalist. The kid has definitely introduced some non-minimalist in my life. The longest I’ve lived in one house is two years, and that’s this last house that I just left. I have moved like three times in a year sometimes, and often in the same town, but still when you’re doing that, you don’t want a lot of stuff. And between that and van life and building this awareness of what you actually need, and one of the things with van life in general or RV life, is you’re very aware.
You said, like waste management, your water. You’re very aware of all the things that you take for granted when you have a nice big house.
Kevin: Plumbing.
Crys: And you become very aware and build this awareness that you can take back into more of a maximal lifestyle. And I’ve really been able to gauge like what elements of minimalism do I really adore and want to keep, and what elements of maximalism do I think are happy and comfortable and healthy for me.
Kevin: As an example, like exactly what you said, we’re building a house. I’m building it basically like a giant immobile RV. Like we’re gonna make it as off grid as I can make it upfront with the goal of making it even more so later.
A generator, solar panels, we’re trying to figure out like, is there a way to do some water reclamation? Our waste products that we create through living, is there a way to compost that? By the way, composting on the road, not going to happen. I am a huge fan of the whole repurpose, reuse and, figure out how to do a lot with very little.
And that I think has been exacerbated since we’ve been in the van, but it’s a good life skill to have. Because what it means is you become resilient. It means that you can have the big house and the big property and all the stuff, you can have all that. There’s nothing wrong with it. But if that goes away, which it sometimes does. I grew up on the Gulf coast, hurricanes, floods, tornadoes. In the west coast, there’s wildfires, there’s avalanches, all kinds of things can change your life like that.
So what happens through this kind of lifestyle and travel is you learn how to be resilient and how to pick up from where you are and how to just continue on your way.
Crys: And share those with your characters.
Kevin: I should have brought that back around, but yes. So I tend to think of things as life and then my writing is a reflection of that life. And I have a story I won’t share, but it involves an incident with our black take. But it taught me a lot about life.
JP: It’s on his YouTube.
Kevin: It was a fun, we’ll say fun experience. And as it turned out, I had COVID when it happened. It was like 15 below. And everyone’s going to totally guess what happened.
Crys: I think that’s a good place to end on that teaser.
Kevin: I won’t disrupt whatever breakfast or anything you were having, dear listener. But the point of it was that could have been a very negative experience that has turned out positive in so many ways, but only because I was willing to reframe it.
And so I’ve had characters deal with things like that. Very similar situation sometimes. And that’s part of the point, right? Like you’re traveling, it’s not just the history and the characters you meet and all that. That’s the wonderful blowy part, swimming in pools of gold, for example, that’s the stuff that’s Instagram cool. But it’s the having to get down in the dirt and grit and change a flat tire like some folks had to do on the way here or having to deal with our air conditioner going out on the van just before we took this trip, having to deal with all that stuff. That’s nuance. That’s the stuff. Those are the challenges. Cause story is about characters overcoming obstacles, right?
I can draw analogies to every single obstacle we’ve faced and how I felt during that moment. Sometimes you feel hopeless. And really, you want that. Nobody wants that, but the reader wants that. Like they want to see that character was hopeless and then overcame it because that tells the reader that they can too. I’m getting into the exciting. We should have done like a warmup podcast.
Crys: And I hate to cut us short, but we do have the conference starting up. But thank you so much for joining us. And we’ll include links to where you can find Kevin.
For our Patreon book of the month we will be reading Take Off Your Pants by Libbie Hawker. And so I hope you’ll join us for that. And my question for our listeners this week is, what is your favorite travel story and how have you taken elements from it and put it in your writing?
JP: Cool. Thank you.
Leave a Reply