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William Dalrymple on Travel Writing

I have been reading Dalrymple’s City of Djinns right now, and can’t help but wonder how nicely written it is. Besides being a good book, the amount of homework and research he has done for the it becomes fairly obvious as I go through the pages. Sometimes, I did wonder how he can recollect some of the fine details. I got the answer to it today, as I stumbled upon Dalrymple’s say on taking notes.

It’s absolutely vital to have a notebook in your hands at all times, and to scribble constantly, not so much full sentences as lists of significant detail: the colour of a hillside, the shape of a tulip, the way a particular tree haunts a skyline. Creating the finely-crafted prose comes later, back at home in front of the computer. On the road – even in a rickety bus or a bumpy jeep – the key is to get down the raw material before it’s lost to memory.

Read the full article on travel writing by William Dalrymple here.

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