How I Travel: Taylor Jenkins Reid Uses Road Trips to Combat Writer’s Block

Given the pace of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s career—she’s published 10 monstrously successful books in 13 years, while also overseeing multiple adaptations of her work into film and television projects—it’s difficult to imagine the author ever struggles with writer’s block. But it happens! “There are times when I can feel like I’ve the plot, quite literally, and I need to get out of my head. Those are the times when my husband, daughter, and I will get in the car and go see something else,” says Jenkins Reid. The Angeleno, who’s set several of her novels amid the glittering lights and palm trees of La La Land, tends to freshen up at the nearest bodies of water in areas like Malibu or Big Bear Lake. “Getting out of your normal routine can really shake out the staleness, both creatively and emotionally. When I come back to my desk, I have new ideas.”

In her latest novel, Atmosphere, Taylor Jenkins Reid spins a tale of female colleagues falling in love in NASA’s 1980s Space Shuttle program, and for her research took in Houston’s humid air and Johnson Space Center. Ahead, she chats with Condé Nast Traveler about glimpsing American cities on book tours, ordering hamburgers in hotel robes, and exploring English architecture with her family.

Her preferred way to travel:

I love a good road trip. I think that’s my favorite mode of transportation because the fun starts the minute you get in the car. With my family in particular, when we get in the car, we sing the vacation song, which is a song that my mom made up when I was a kid. The vacation starts, first thing.

What type of packer she is:

I’m an over-packer, but not with clothes. Clothes, I’m actually really good about. But I have a small cross-body bag—really, a glorified fanny pack—and every single thing that could possibly go wrong is accounted for in that bag. It’s a Mary Poppins-level bag, so things keep coming out of it. I have ibuprofen, I have Dramamine, I have every medicine a person could need. I have tissues, lip balm, hand sanitizer, protein bars, and chargers. I have Wisps if I ever need to brush my teeth in the middle of the day. I travel so much now that I have experienced so many different things that can go wrong or come up. Now that bag is packed to the gills.

Her priorities when planning a vacation:

I’m looking for relaxation. The two things that are relaxing to me are being in nature and [seeing] architecture. I love to walk through a city I’ve never been in before and look at the architecture, getting a sense of the history of the place by learning how the city functions. I will walk for hours and hours. That’s something I love to do in Europe particularly.

On my daughter’s last spring break, I had a little European book tour so I went out first to London, and then my husband and daughter joined me. We spent a few days there and a few in Bath, which is one of my favorite cities in the world. There’s such a sense of history, because it really does feel like you’re traveling back in time. Then we went to Brighton, and flew to Italy and walked all around Rome before spending some days in Lake Como. Part of what was so great about seeing all these different cities is the architecture is so different! And ending in Lake Como, I got to look out at all the beautiful trees and beautiful lake. Nature and architecture are the things that guide me. I find them the most restorative.