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Truth in Travel

Have you ever stood with your back to the sea, held up the resort brochure and marveled at the difference?  The sea photographed for the brochure is turquoise, the sky, brilliant, almost surreal blue, the sand is blindingly white, the palms sway in an invisible breeze because you can’t PhotoShop the breeze.

The actual beach is strewn with trash, the sky is the color of lead and the only brilliantly colored feature in the whole scene are the yellow signs cautioning swimmers to mind the:  sharks, box jellyfish, or riptide.  Pick something.

It happens so often it’s a travel cliche.

No one photographs the disappointment, but you should journal about it.  It’s the first step to truth in travel and enables you to contrast what you expect with what you really saw.

Like the Sphinx starting across the parking lot at a KFC, journaling allows us to widen our view, and capture something of the truth.

CatharineBramkamp

Catharine Bramkamp is a successful writing coach and author. She has published over 300 newspaper and magazine articles in publications like Modern Maturity (AARP), SF Chronicle and Santa Rosa Magazine. She was a contributor to two Chicken Soup Books and has published anthologies of her work, non-fiction works and novels. Her work has also appeared in a number of poetry and fiction anthologies. She has experimented with the self-publishing world since 2001. She has published and self-published seven books through companies like Author House, author assist companies like 3L Publishing and through traditional publishers like Write Life. Her poetry collection, Ammonia Sunrise, will be released in August 2011 by Finishing Line Press and her mystery novel, In Good Faith will be released by Write Life in 2011. Catharine holds a BA in English from UCSB and a MA in English from Sonoma State University. She is a 25 year member of California Writer’s Club. She is an adjunct professor for the University of Phoenix. She works with authors of both fiction and non-fiction to make their dream of producing a book come true. For more information on that, visit her at www.YourBookStartsHere.com Catharine has lived in Sonoma County for 25 years and considers wine a food group. She is married to an adorable and very patient man who complains he’s never featured in any of her books. Her grown children who are featured in a few of her books have fled the county.

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