Essay: The pleasure, benefits of writing on the train

I used to love to go to Subway to get myself a cheap sandwich, where I could admire the funky wallpaper—orange and yellow and black, with old-timey subway trains. The sandwiches were cheap, and you could imagine being a fine lady with a parasol taking the newfangled underground train. I no longer eat fast-food sandwiches, thanks to the long hair I found in my sandwich one time, and they no longer have that fun wallpaper. It was not a hard decision.  

But I do like to take part in a train journey. Given a car, airplane, or train to make my journey, I will always take the train, if feasible. I’m talking about from the Bay Area to Portland or Los Angeles, across the southwest or back to California from Chicago. I found that riding on a train is an excellent time to get some writing done. 

My first two published books were my Aunt Doris’ diaries, from when she was a Flapper teenager, circa 1925. Her diaries are hilarious: Doris sneaks out, sips liquor, chases boys, buys clothes and daydreams about her one true love. Sometimes she gets to drive Daddy’s big car, but usually she has to take the streetcar or the train. When I went on tour with those books, wanting to emulate Doris, I traveled thousands of miles by train. I visited libraries, book groups, speakeasies, historical societies, and more, and I loved, loved taking the train. 

Also, I used to be an ardent participant in National Novel Writing Month. I am a very deadline-motivated writer, with decades of newsroom experience. I was well-trained in J-school, back before computers. I still love a good deadline. I love having 30 days to draft a novel. Thirty days is ideal—long enough to be a challenge, but not so long that you want to check yourself into rehab afterward. 

In the mid-teens, Amtrak caught wind of the number of writers riding the rails and decided to offer up what they called the Amtrak Writers’ Residency — a ticket with a roomette for sleeping, room and board across the country and back. I don’t recall the specifics, but I absolutely applied for that residency, in part because I had already been on my own private, Amtrak residency, and partly because who wouldn’t want to ride the cross-country train for free? Unfortunately, the fine print read that if they selected you for the residency, they owned your work-product body and soul …. so it was all for the best that Amtrak didn’t choose me.  

Nonetheless, on one of those cross-country journeys, my book tour coincided with NaNoWriMo. It was November, and I had to write my 1,400 words each day or die trying.  If you have ever sat in a coffee shop typing other people’s dialogue to get some practice in writing authentic/realistic dialogue, then you’ll know how I enjoyed sitting in the communal parlor, cars traveling from one end of the country to the other. 

On Amtrak cars, you’ll see mostly the less affluent, because of course, wealthy people don’t ride in coach. This gives you an opportunity to share a cigarette with a fellow traveler, to meet retired couples, foreign students, Amish couples, and sometimes historical reenactors. There’s a specific train once or twice a year down in Los Angeles that is solely for people dressed from the 1920s. Coming across a herd of such people in Union Station in Los Angeles was an absolute delight.  

Nevertheless, a lot of my time was also spent looking out windows and noting all of the intriguing things one sees from a train. 

While I was attempting my NaNoWriMo project, I was forced to make a third- or fourth-day switch because someone had already written “my” novel subject (better than I ever would). I didn’t want to fail at NaNoWriMo on Day Four, and I wrung my hands to think of anything, literally anything to write, now in just 26 days. I eventually calmed down and said, “I don’t know, I guess write what you know?” 

Well, dear reader, what do I know? My eye fell upon my bookcase, caught by the yellow bindings of my collected Little House novels. I know the Little House stories inside and out. I’ve read them every year for 50 years at least. So I started writing a new novel. I had to jump on the train for my Doris book tour, and thus, spent my book-tour writing this story on the train about Laura Ingalls Wilder, crossing the prairie, by wagon and by train. 

It got very meta very quickly, because I was also crossing the prairie on my own travels. Laura had taken the train; I was taking the train. Laura had been to San Francisco; I have lived in San Francisco. I’m no Laura Ingalls Wilder, but we absolutely had some points in common, so I kept writing.  

The train has a familiar rocking rhythm to it. It can lower you into a bit of a trance, and you can find yourself miles away in a book or in the depths of the piece you are writing. I will testify that that’s what happened. I finished my trip, both directions, and then I finished that draft of the novel by the end of November. I couldn’t think of a title, so I called it “I Love Laura,” I put it in a drawer and walked away with the rest of my life.  

Ten years passed.  

Last year, my friend Vicki DeArmon, the publisher of Sibylline Press, asked me if I had any forgotten manuscripts in the drawer. Of course I do. I’m a writer. I have had neglected manuscripts in the drawer since I was 25. 

I pulled out this “I Love Laura” novel and started rereading it, because I was certain it was a ridiculous bunch of nothing, written in haste on a train while racing the clock. Well, it turns out it was not terrible and rather a literary delight.  

Tip for writers: Put something in the drawer for 10 years and then see what you think. It really changes your perspective.  

I went on and did a deep revision of that manuscript and turned it into the editor. That novel is slated for publication Nov. 14. 

In “Whoa, Nelly!,” lonely librarian Nelly sets out to walk in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s footsteps—only to find that the prairie isn’t as romantic as she imagined. As she confronts the darker legacies of the Little House series—racism, revisionist nostalgia, and the shadowy influence of Rose Wilder Lane—Nelly must reckon with her own buried truths. As I wrote this novel, I dropped footnotes into the story because I am a shameless know-it-all, and so is Nelly the librarian (my literary doppelganger in many ways).  

All through the train ride, Nelly observes the physical, the historical, the social and the political, and directly addresses the reader, like I’m doing now, dear reader, in footnotes. For anyone who loves children’s literature, or books about books, this novel about books and trains and loneliness might just be for you. 

I am planning to ride the rails again soon, to attend book festivals and visit distant friends. I will get on the train at Emeryville, open my laptop, and dream. The next masterpiece could be onboard, somewhere down the tracks, waiting to be unfurled. 

Julia Park Tracey is an award-winning journalist and author of “The Bereaved,” based on her research of her Orphan Train roots; the historical novel “Silence” about a Puritan woman who dares to question the church; and “Whoa, Nelly: A Love Story with footnotes” (Sibylline Digital First, 238 pages, $18 paperback, $5.99 e-reader, Nov. 14, 2025). 

The author launches “Whoa, Nelly!: A Love Story with Footnotes” at 7 p.m. Nov. 21 at Copperfield’s Books, 140 Kentucky St., Petaluma; visit copperfieldsbooks.com.