The Writer as Nomad
I’m away for three months per year on average. I like to go on adventurous research trips for sometimes weeks at a time, to uncomfortable places where you might find yourself sleeping in a desert, in the jungle, or on a shack floor overlooking a rice paddy. My favorite places to sleep aside from airplanes on long-haul flights is on night trains.
Anyone who hasn’t ridden a night train at least once in their life is truly missing out on something special. Night trains in Egypt and Turkey are especially romantic and adventurous. The ones in India are pure adventure in that they stop all night long while new passengers get on and get off. You just deal with it.
Once, when we were about to depart from just such a station, a woman stepped off the platform, fell onto the tracks and both her legs were got off at the knees. We rushed off the train only to see her being dragged back up onto the platform where she bled out. There were just too many people at the station to give her severe wounds proper attention in the time required. In India, life is expendable.
During all these moments, I always had my laptop and camera nearby. I wasn’t on vacation. I was working, performing my job as a digital nomad, or as I like to say, a digital nomadman. One of the reasons I became a freelance writer, and a prolific genre fiction writer, is so I could afford to travel to the ends of the earth and get paid. Sometimes I don’t go on research adventures but instead stay in Italy or France for extended periods of up to a month or two at a time.
You become a part of the community when you immerse yourself in the daily life of the Italian or the Parisian. You do the same things there that you do at home (write, hit the gym, go to the bar, cook, etc.), but 5,000+ miles away, things are different and therefore more interesting.
The life of the nomad is truly rewarding which is like saying there’s some salt water in the Pacific Ocean. Don’t take my word for it. I know of some freelance writers who haven’t been home in years. My two to three months away per year pales in comparison to the way they live their lives.
Like me, you can watch their adventures on YouTube. Never a dull moment. Maybe we’re not making the kind of money Tony Bourdain made before he decided his life wasn’t worth living anymore and strung himself up on a showerhead in France, but we make enough to get by and if need be, to get ourselves back home again…home and dry.
That said, here are some things to keep in mind if you’re going to attempt the life of the digital nomad (man or woman):
--Travel lightly: You need to be highly mobile and the last thing you want is to check your luggage only to have it misplaced by the airlines. Use only a backpack that qualifies as a carry-on. You can always do laundry.
--Your office: Presently, my office consists of a laptop. Preferably a computer like a Lenovo that can take a beating, but that isn’t heavy or costs an arm and a leg. Your cell phone is a part of your office. If need be, bring a good digital camera or simply use your phone. You can also find an inexpensive portable printer these days. Pack these items in a carry-on shoulder bag.
--Your choice of country: Many countries are expensive these days due to fuel shortages. But you can still find Airbnb deals in certain parts of Italy, Spain, France, Croatia, and more. You just need to do your research. If you’re really adventurous, you can live in Thailand which costs about half what it does to live in the U.S.
--Getting work: If you haven’t already lined up assignments while still in the U.S. go to LinkedIn to find which companies and publications are paying for steady streams of articles and blogs. Or, if you’re like me, and your main moneymaker is genre fiction (on top of nonfiction assignments), learn to write prolifically and publish every month. Also, like me, you might wish to be a hybrid author: that is, you publish traditionally and independently.
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You can do it. I went to Italy for two months on one lung!
Hey, good stuff, Mista Vin. I especially liked the tip of using Linked In to find freelance writing gigs.