Seems like half of the people I meet want to be travel writers. The other half want to write the story of their lives — they seem to believe their lives have been so fascinating that publishers will want to offer them big advances and snap up their story.
From what I’ve read (I’ve never been a travel writer nor have I written my autobiography), unless those people have done something fascinating recently (crash-landed a fully-loaded airliner on the Hudson River, for instance, or survived a shark attack and inspired the world), most publishers would take a pass on their life story, I think.
As for travel writing, although it’s not very easy to break in, it can be done. Just last week I happened upon a post by Cecily Layzell on Suite101.com on “How to Break into Travel Writing.”
Her post featured tips from a travel industry veteran, Steve Korver. Along with newspaper and magazine articles and travel guides, Korver’s portfolio includes travel articles in the New York Times, the Guardian, The Globe & Mail, Time Out and Fodor’s. Korver doesn’t discuss how easy (or how hard) it is to break into travel writing, but he does provide his top tips, as well as great inspiration about how he roams the globe to produce travel articles.
Cecily Layzell has also done some travel writing, traveling extensively through Europe and Africa and regularly contributing to Suite101′s Mediterranean and Moroccan food sections.
If you’re really serious about wanting to write travel articles, you might want to check out Cecily Layzell’s article. You can also find a number of other travel writing links at the Suite101.com site, including travel writing for blogs and web sites, resources for writing travel articles and books, and how to get a job writing for travel guides.
Plus, if you do a Google search, about 16,200,000 hits for “getting started in travel writing” will turn up.
© 2009 Laverne Daley
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