On the bumpy road

Can you write a novel while riding in a car through the wilderness of northern Russia? I can't, and I didn't even bother to try, because it would just make me sick.

I have two so-called novels in progress, sometimes in progress at least. The first one is a crime novel. I ran into some problems with it, some issues with the plot, and I'm kind of loosing the overview and control of things. I'm not quite sure what to do about it, so I started on a 2nd novel, which is more like a road novel. There's no plot, I just write, and I write longhand, in a notebook that I can always bring with me when I'm travelling.

Yesterday I wen't on a business trip to Murmansk, again.

I'm a little bit reluctant to domestic flights in Russia right now. They've had too many accidents this year. In the last plane crash, a couple of weeks ago, an entire pro-hockey team from the KHL (the Russian equivalent of NHL) was wiped out. Right now Russia is even ranked behind Congo on air-line safety.

So I chose a different route this time. I took a plane as far to the north and east as I could get, close to the Russian border. It's a two-hour flight, and I spent the time working on my (2nd) novel. Great!

The novel is about two old men escaping from the nursery home. Just like me, they're going up north, but by train and ship, rather than plane and car. Since I'm just a hobby writer, I don't have much time to do research. So I have to write about things I know and places I've been.

My Russian driver picked me up at the airport, and 15 minutes later, we crossed the border to Russia, which takes some time. There are two check points, one on each side of the border. About 100 km of the road goes through a Russian military zone. So there were more check points, in and out of the military zone.

It's difficult to build good roads on the tundra. The roads get very bumpy, because of the seasonal freezing and melting of the surface layer. Sometimes it feels like riding a roller coaster. Reading and writing in the car is out of question. The only thing I could do was to talk with the driver, about fishing and hunting and cars and Soviet history. He told me interesting things about every town we passed through. That's the way I like it, when the driver acts like a tourist guide as we go along.

After a four-hour drive through the wilderness, I arrived in my hotel in Murmansk. Then I could return to my novel, finally. I wrote a few pages before I went down to the restaurant, to get some food and a dark beer (Krusovice, Czeck beer; quite good). Then I returned to my room to write some more.

It's a bad novel, I admit, but I have lots of fun writing it. I don't know where it will end yet, maybe in Murmansk. We will see.

And the title of this post is inspired by Jack Kerouac of course. His novel is a lot better than mine >:)

(Half way between the Russian border and Murmansk, we stopped in a cafe in the middle of nowhere, to get a cup of coffee and a salomon sandwich. The cafe is that little yellow building to the right in the picture. I think it's an old freight car from the rail road company.)