"There are Cinderella's two stepsisters, who cut off their own toes, and Snow White's stepmother, who danced to death in red-hot iron slippers. The Goose Girl's maid got rolled down a hill in a barrel studded with nails. Travel is hard on the single woman. There was this one woman who walked east of the sun and then west of the moon looking for her lover, who had left her because she spilled tallow on his nightshirt. She wore out at least one pair of perfectly good iron shoes before she found him. Take our word for it, he wasn't worth it. What do you think happened when she forgot to put the fabric softener in the dryer? Laundry is hard, travel is harder."
From Travels with the Snow Queen by Kelly Link (which you'll find in her gorgeously surreal collection, Stranger Things Happen)
Since the Middle Ages (and surely before) we've been obsessed with travel. Back then, a knight would journey, both day and night, through barren land and savage forest, often for the sake of some beautiful woman's honour. Even some of the earliest existing stories include the journey motif. For the Anglo-Saxon poet who first coined The Wanderer, life itself was journey -- we traveled on the ocean of this transient life to get to the Divine. And of course, we've now the road trip, the plane trip and the safari, though bizarrely enough, the themes haven't changed so much. We still believe movement of the body can mirror, or even encourage, that of the mind.
One thing I love about using the journey motif in stories is that the very act of writing is a journey itself. This is a most fitting metaphor for me because I tend to plan after I've written my first draft. Zany? A tadge, but I know I'm not the only one! The story tumbles out, then I go back through and sew it carefully together. This means, initially, the whole piece unfolds without a plan -- a bit like a treck through the wilds with no map.
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