Despite the allure of the job, many writers do not stick with travel writing for various reasons; low pay, early morning flights followed by late night bus rides, realizing they are not the next Hemingway, intense competition, traveling alone, spending your days and nights eating, sleeping, and visiting places that you'd rather not. Did I mention the low pay.
Roger Norum, a British travel writer put it well, "It’s not enough to be discontent with your job to want to become a writer: most writers are much more discontented than you with their lives."
BUT, if you love to write and travel, and can deal with the downsides of the gig then there are some amazing adventures waiting for you. What could be better than getting paid to travel?
Starting small is the most common advice you will hear, and it is astute. Start writing clips wherever you can local newsletters, neighborhood papers, school papers, anywhere that will publish you. At the same time you should be writing about the travel you are already doing. Not only is it good practice, but you can actually start submitting your work. The crux of this is you should be a writer first and a traveler second, as you may find you enjoy other types of journalistic endeavors. At this point you should learn how to write a pitch letter, but that will have to be left for another post.
Travel writing is finding the unique not the ubiquitous, the intoxicating not the insipid, and the abstruse not the apparent. The most important skill needed to accomplish this old fashioned observation: paying detailed attention to what is going on around you. A good way to practice this is to go somewhere familiar and pretend that it is all new to you and jot down everything that happens for a period of time. It is amazing how much more happens when you are simply observing.
Guidebook authorship, is an interesting sub-field and will be discussed in a later post.
Worldhum.com, Mediabistro.com, Killingbatteries.com and, Transitionsabroad.com all have valuable information on different aspects of travel writing.
—Derek Pettie
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