When we first decided that we would walk the Camino de Santiago in September of 2019, the month and year seemed so impossibly far away. The little number in the corner of today’s date on my desktop calendar tells me the divide between then and our departure date has somehow become so much smaller! Practically insignificant in comparison. The excitement grows every day. Once you walk the Camino, it scratches at your thoughts like a lost home that keeps calling you back. It’s almost as if the Camino aches for you as much as you ache for the Camino…and it keeps reminding you. “I am here. I am here. I am here.”
This is a small clock tower that leads to a piazza in Ponferrada, Spain. I have arranged it so that Michael and I will be staying right inside that piazza during our September, 2019 Camino pilgrimage. We will need to walk through the small corridor beneath this clock in order to get to our rest stop for that particular night. (I snapped this shot during my 2014 Camino)
September 10th is when we fly to Spain. 54 days from now.
One of the biggest thrills of my 2014 Camino was when I discovered the murals on the walls of the Monastery of San Xulián de Samos in Samos, Spain. I mean, it took my breath away. I think about it still with some kind of loving devotion that makes no sense to this heretical atheist. I can’t wait to see these murals again. The murals depict scenes from the life of St. Benedict. Shortly before SAMOS, SPAIN, there is a fork in the CAMINO ROAD. One way goes to Samos, and one way bypasses the beautiful town to save a couple miles. TAKE THE ROAD THAT WILL TAKE YOU TO THESE MURALS! It’s worth the extra miles.
We will not be doing the full Camino Frances, but that is no matter. The Camino is not about that, as much as some people who don’t fully get it would have you believe. We will be flying into Madrid, and then travelling from Madrid to Astorga. Once there, we will begin our Camino de Santiago adventure from that beautiful town…from the shadow of the gorgeous cathedral there.
The vistas you come upon on the Camino will steal your heart and hold it captive. This shot was taken during my 2014 pilgrimage. This is a typical scene in the GALICIA REGION of SPAIN. It’s big sky and big universe country. It will stay with you forever, but it will also demand that you one day return.
I will be taking notes this time. I’ve already decided. I’m not finished writing about the Camino. It has decided to become a greater part of my story, and I have decided to keep listening, to keep reflecting, to keep projecting. So stay tuned, OR BE FOREWARNED. There will be more to come.
I wrote a novel upon my first return from Spain. One day I hope it finds a way to the light of day. This time? I think I’m going to write about our journey. That’s the plan, anyway. But what happens on the Camino happens…there is no way to predict your journey. We shall see. I will be looking for a sign…and I hope to write about it later. I know one thing for certain. We will be putting one foot in front of the other.
I am SO passionate about the last book I wrote, I find myself thinking about the characters all the time. It’s one of the only novels I ever wrote over a long period of time, as opposed to over a long weekend at the Muskoka novel writing marathon.
When I first had the idea for THE CAMINO CLUB, I was just about to set out on one of the greatest adventures of my life…a walk on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Spain. The idea simmered slowly while I made my packing list back home in Toronto. I was picking up a spork and hiking socks at a camping store in Toronto while contemplating one of my main characters and how he would suffer a tragic loss while he was being forced to walk the Camino over his summer holidays. I was trying on backpacks while coming up with the name for another main character…one who loved her dog and hated her parents and fought the idea of walking the Camino with every fiber of her being.
I even came up with the tagline idea prior to actually setting foot in Spain. THE BREAKFAST CLUB MEETS THE CAMINO DE SANTIAGO. As taglines go, it doesn’t even make much sense. The whole MEETS thing is to conjoin two books, two movies, two shows, two ideas, etc. Not to conjoin a movie with a place. But in my head it worked. Juvenile delinquents forced to walk the pilgrimage route as penance for their crimes. A youth diversion program.
Long before I wrote the first word of The Camino Club, I knew intuitively that it would be THE book…the ever-illusive ‘book of my heart‘ book. I heard others speaking of their own ‘heart books‘. I knew some of mine had come close, but I also knew I had not yet written my heart book. It was still out there.
I had planned to take notes every day I was on the Camino, to assist me in shaping the novel that I would eventually write once my own Camino pilgrimage was over. I really did. I thought I might even write some of it in the albergues at night, after my long days of walking. But the magic of the Camino that I had heard so much about for so many years prior to heading to Spain? Turns out, even though it was exuberantly described to me, it was still greatly understated. There is no describing what the Camino does to a person until one enters the Camino and discovers the magic for themselves.
As life-changing as the pilgrimage was, I still somehow managed to walk with each of my juvenile delinquent characters in my head and in my thoughts (mostly). I imagined them grumbling at the difficult bits and slowly melting into a softness of acceptance along the way. I imagined their dramas and their downfalls and their highs. I questioned why I would want one of my characters to experience the loss of a loved one back home while they were hiking across Spain and unable to do anything about it. Why would I be so cruel?
It was only while I was on the Camino that I realized there was a core character missing from my novel idea. I had to run into this magically delightful older Frenchman before the full bones of the novel began to fall into place for me. Upon meeting Claude, I instantly knew I had to immortalize him in my story…even if only for myself.
The gentleman in the foreground of this shot taken at an albergue in Spain along the Camino de Santiago was my inspiration for the BASTIEN character in The Camino Club. Claude’s magic just would not leave me. I knew I needed someone like him in my story.
Today is actually the 5th anniversary of the day I met this man. I know this because this is what came up in my Facebook memories today:
He was telling us that life was still good even though he had just lost his wife. He was walking the Camino and bringing joy to everyone he met along the way. He held our albergue as a captive audience that night…told us stories that made us laugh and stories that made us cry. When he said the line quoted above, he had tears in his own eyes. And with that line, I received my AHA moment. This man will help my delinquents along on their journey! 5 years ago today, BASTIEN was born. Happy Bastien Day! It is my hope that one day you will be able to read this story for yourself and fall in love with Bastien the same way I fell in love with Claude. It’s the story of my heart.
Buen Camino!
EDITED TO ADD: THE CAMINO CLUB was purchased by Duet Books, the YA imprint of Interlude Press. It is on PREORDER HERE.
I woke up this morning with Writer Instructor dialogue running through my thoughts. I notice this phenomenon ratcheting up as the yearly Muskoka Novel Marathon slowly approaches. This is the time when I truly begin to think about the writing process in general and the upcoming MNM novel in particular. I become this super coach who prepares a team of ONE for a marathon that does not involve any form of running, jogging or walking.
This morning I woke up thinking about all the stuff the writer has to do to learn about their characters, their plots, their settings, their universes. We have to write the stuff down that we don’t use in our story. I’m not talking about the stuff we’ll sneak in as the dreaded INFO DUMP. I’m not really talking about backstory, even, even though I am. I know that doesn’t make sense on the surface, but trust me…it makes sense.
Backstory, in general, is stuff you sprinkle into your story for the reader—stuff they discover about the characters’ pasts. Their motivations, their goals, etc, etc, etc. BUT—there’s another kind of backstory the WRITER should think about. Yes, there are motivational epiphanies we should share with our readers. That’s obvious. But there’s a whole life behind every character we create. Have you ever thought about writing out memories and experiences the characters have that have NOTHING TO DO WITH THE STORY YOU’RE WRITING? I mean, HAVE YOU? Because you should.
This is not a new concept, even for me. But it is one I keep going back to. I wrote an article for a writing newsletter once upon a time about diary entries. It’s now on my blog and for some reason it’s one of my most popular posts. People come to it by these bizarre Google searches about writing and diaries and characters and the like. I linked the blog post above…and I might be repeating myself today.
The backstory you give your characters stays inside you and you remember it as you’re navigating your way through your story. You become an expert on what your characters would or wouldn’t do, how they would or wouldn’t react based on this backstory. And again—I’m not talking about the backstory you feed your readers. I’m talking about the backstory ONLY YOU KNOW. So, the more you explore the people you create, the more you know them…the more you intuitively know their path through the story you create. This is why I spend a lot of time this time of year in developing my people for my Muskoka Novel Marathon novel. We 40 writers get together for a long weekend in July and we all attempt to write a novel in 72 hours. I like to know who my characters are before I leap into that kind of an abyss.
Now, you can write their unseen-by-any-readers-ever backstory on paper or on your word processor, OR you can just chew away at it in your own little head. Either way works. The more stories you create about their past, the more it helps you to predict their future. And the future is the arc in which they travel through your novel. By setting up these pre-story lives as much as possible, you are doing a kind of homework that would otherwise be impossible. Even if you ‘practice’ with these characters for a hundred pages and then toss it away…those hundred pages are not wasted words. They are a foundation on which you can build the first sentence of your novel, and the second and the third.
For me, this works. Especially since I hit the ground running on a Friday evening and attempt to walk away on a Monday evening with a fully written first draft novel. I need every edge I can get.
Random photo because I wanted to add something to look at. There’s a magical place along the Camino de Santiago where you get to walk through vineyards and it’s gorgeous. Here’s a peek.
Do yourself a favour and try this. Write situations, scenes, memories with your potential characters. Form a backstory for them that you will NEVER use in your finished work. Get to know them. They’ll pay you back in spades when you’re deep in the heart of your novel and trying to decide what your character will do next. If you know your character, you know how they’ll choose to move forward in your story…
KEVIN CRAIG 