How to make your travel blog (and other writing) sing

how to make your travel blog sing?  Here are a few tips to help.

• It often helps to make a basic outline before you start writing.
• Talk to locals. How else will you learn about the place?
• Find a fresh angle to the story. Most places have been written about before so find something original that will grab a reader’s attention.
• Take notes, ask questions, get quotes and jot down the little details of your trip.  How much did it cost? What’s the name of the district it’s in? Always be specific.
• Avoid clichés! Lose the “best-kept secrets”, “city of contrasts” and “unspoilt gems”.  Why do lodges always “nestle” at the foothills or “perch” vulture-like atop a mountain with “breathtaking views” over a “rustic” village?

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

• Lose the unremitting good cheer. Among all the stories I had read about Egypt before I went, nobody had prepared me for the filth, the cruelty to horses, the stray dogs and starving camels eating cardboard from rubbish dumps.  Be more realistic. Tell the truth!
• Read, read, read: Rinse and repeat. Only good reading can make you a better writer. Dip regularly into your list of 25 favourite travel writers. You will never develop a voice and style without reading in the style you want to write – travel.
• Add historical or political context to assist the point you’re making in your piece.
• Thomas Swick wrote in Roads not Taken (http://www.thomasswick.com/articles/roadsnottaken.html)  “It is the job of travel writers to have experiences that are beyond the realm of the average tourist, to go beneath the surface, and then to write interestingly of what they find.
• Good travel writers understand that times have changed, and in an age when everybody has been everywhere (and when there is a Travel Channel for those who haven’t), it is not enough simply to describe a landscape, you must now interpret it.”
• Seek to entertain, and educate, your reader in a light, breezy way.
• Write, write, write: You have to write even when – especially when – you don’t feel like it.
• Paint with words: Take the reader on an armchair journey.  Include sensory details. What did the place look like?  Feel like?  Smell like? Taste like? Remind you of?
• Develop a speciality: If you want to stand out, it pays to be an expert on something that you’re passionate about.
• If you can’t afford to travel abroad: write about new activities in your local area.  Become a travel expert on your own city. Does it have any unusual landmarks, remarkable museums or attractions? How about festivals?
• Show. Don’t tell: Loose the adverbs and flowery descriptions. Choose the perfect verb instead.
• End with a punch or at least ensure the ending captures the point of the story. Don’t dare to say you can’t wait to return to wherever you went – that’s been done to death.
• When your piece is finished, read it out loud to find that parts that don’t work.

 

How to run away from home and reinvent yourself: a personal recipe

• 

  Xiamen library

    Start as a child with a love of reading. For me this involved hiding under the blankets reading of far-away places that created a desire for travel: I was Anne Frank in her Amsterdam attic; and, I was Heidi on the mountains of Switzerland: I was the hero between the covers of every book!

• Add listening to far away, static-crackling voices in languages I didn’t understand on my brother’s crystal radio, and dream of exploring those lives! An idea, the yeast of a dream, began bubbling below the surface of my conciseness. The first, most basic ingredients for my developing recipe are then lined up on the kitchen bench of my mind.
• Cover and leave that bowl of imagination to infiltrate through life’s ups and downs, keep reading, keep dreaming until life and circumstances add more ingredients. These extra components are where your individuality, situation, and conditions, add to the recipe and finally, the result! (NOTE: Unlike many recipes, this one is totally tailored to your circumstances.)

My extra ingredients included: the deaths of my 20-year old son and my 35-yr old husband, recovery from alcoholism, and, after what seemed like too many birthdays, I still didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Perhaps I could play catch-up with the traditional Kiwi penchant for travel. That germ of an idea, like all living things, divides and multiplies as it sits on the sometimes-messy kitchen bench of my mind.

Just some of my travel pics!

the author in Haridwar

Heather – the kiwiwtravelwriter

first bite

The kiwi travel writer enjoys Fiji cruising

Happy Thai new year

The kiwitravelwriter, arrives on Talang-Taland Island, Sarwawak, Malaysian Borneo. photo by Gustino from Sarawak Tourism Board, who hotested me)

Yes, that’s me up there!

My face needed this treatment!

Christchurch, NZ

Now, add more ingredients so you too can reinvent yourself – mine were:

Travel solo

Travel for a year

Make no plans or bookings, just travel

On returning, after a year, I added:

• Two years work & saving
• A short writing course
• Have an article about canoeing down the Zambesi published
• Sell more travel stories; add those dollars to my travel fund
• Buy another international airline ticket
• Travel for another year in different countries
• Publish a book about your travels

Print version was published in 2007

This recipe is never finished yet you can cook it, eat it, and share it daily. The flavours and textures change frequently – depending if you have used the high heat of Thailand or the coolness of a northern hemisphere winter, and, of course, your choice of spices.

So, if you want to run away from home or reinvent yourself, pick your ingredients from the lists above, add your own, use your imagination, mix well, and as ‘they’ whoever they are, say, “the world’s your oyster.”

Write two more books and travel, travel, travel!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How-to tips for travel writing – you want to be a travel writer?

The Kiwi Travel Writer enjoys cruising in Fiji

So you want to be a travel writer, you want some tips. Okay first, after teaching travel writing over many years I can tell you most people never get published – sad but true. In fact, that’s why I stopped teaching – it didn’t feel right to be encouraging an almost impossible dream. Unfortunately, as a freelancer, like me, with shrinking travel pages in magazines and newspapers, you will find fewer places for you to send your work to and, the competition is high.

You will also discover that you will not be swanning around the world with free airline tickets, accommodation in five-star hotels, and meals at fancy restaurants – again, sad but true.

I’m sure your friends and family tell you that you write really well, that ‘you should be a travel writer’, that in fact ‘you should write a book’. That may well be true but, and this is a big but, editors do not want articles sent to them that are really like an email or letter you sent your grandmother about your time in Rome; or the one to your girlfriend about the romantic date you had with that talk dark and handsome, very dishy, Greek. These absolutely could be the basis for a great story – just written differently.

Something else that stops people fulfilling their dream to become a travel writer is the discipline and hard work it takes! It’s not just the writing, you will also need to be your own travel consultant, time manager, tax advisor, receipt keeper, bookkeeper, bookings maker, PR person, media and editor chaser, and of course, photographer. Oh, one more thing, you also don’t get paid until the editor actually prints your work – so make sure you have some cash hidden away. I live on a budget so I can travel to where I want to go … not just to the flavour of the month destination, or where I’m invited – in fact I turn down invitations if they don’t excite me!

However, if you love to travel, if you love to write, if you love to take photos, this is a great job: in fact, I think I have the best job in the world. I’m on the bottom of the food chain, but I have a great lifestyle. Sometimes I do get airline tickets and five-star accommodation too but that’s because people know my work and believe they get value for money from me. What’s even more confirming is that I’ve been invited more than once to the same country, or event, by the same tourism agencies.

I started travel writing after a year-long trip, alone with no bookings, around the world, from Alaska to Zimbabwe. On my return to New Zealand I took a short writing class and was encouraged to send some of my travel stories to local newspapers and magazines. To my amazement they were all accepted and cheques sent – I immediately decided I would be a travel writer; it seemed it was that easy. But no, over the following years I received many ‘no thank you’ letters, or, as you will find – if you continue your dream of travel writing – silence from editors. Yes, that’s right, most don’t even answer.

Nevertheless, if you decide to become a travel writer here are just a few tips – I don’t do these all the time, but mix-and-match to suit the occasion, and more importantly, the style of the magazine or newspaper I’m pitching to. As I am not a journalist, I very rarely approach editors before my travels – this is because mostly I’m a traveller who writes, not a writer who travels. Sometimes I have an idea of stories before I go, but usually I just go exploring and stories find me. However this too can be a cultural thing – each country expects different things from writers. For instance, when I have sent stories to the USA I need to use American spelling – seems editors there don’t think their readers can translate from Kiwi, or British, spelling.

Back to that list of tips, and of course other travel writers would add or subtract from this – so, please add your tips in the comments below:

• Of course, first you have to be a writer – travel writing is just one genre. Read Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
• The basics: Learn about the place by talking to locals. Don’t interview your computer or guidebook, your readers can do that for themselves; but they are a good source for the correct spellings of places
• Don’t write about places you haven’t been to – unless of course, you are doing a story about your bucket list. That’s PR/editorial work, not travel-writing, and you want your readers to know you are reliable for telling the truth.
• Get lost – the best stories are not always in the main tourist destinations but in the back roads and streets of places
• Take notes, ask questions, get quotes, and note the colours, smells, and tastes. [I don’t journal when travelling but take copious photos and lists of ideas, and notes on speech, dress for example]
• Avoid clichés, almost like the plague – although,  see I’ve just used one, because occasionally they’re useful
• Lose the ‘best kept secrets’, ‘city of contrasts’ and ‘unspoilt gems’.  Why do lodges always ‘nestle’ at the foothills or ‘perch’ vulture-like atop a mountain with ‘breath-taking views’ over a ‘rustic’ village?
• Find a fresh angle to the story. Rarely will you find a place that has not been written about so find something original to grab a reader’s attention
• Be realistic and tell the truth – in other words, talk about the filth, the cruelty to horses, the stray dogs or what seems to be, starving camels eating cardboard from rubbish dumps. [Apart from the occasional cropping I don’t edit my pics either – you see what I saw i.e. I also tell the truth in my photos]
• Read travel blogs, travel writers books and, of course, magazines and newspapers travel pages
• This should have been my first tip: Read, read, read: Rinse and repeat, often. Good reading will make you a better writer. You will never develop your own voice and style without reading.

think about things

• Along with reading you need to write, write, write, even when you don’t want to. Paint a picture with words for your reader
• Add some historical or political context to add to the point.
• Thomas Swick wrote in Roads Not Taken ‘It is the job of travel writers to have experiences that are beyond the realm of the average tourist, to go beneath the surface, and then to write interestingly of what they find … Good travel writers understand that times have changed, and in an age when everybody has been everywhere (and when there is a Travel Channel for those who haven’t), it is not enough simply to describe a landscape, you must now interpret it.’
• Write about your local area, become a travel expert on your own city. After all, your city is somewhere travellers visit. [When my city, Christchurch, New Zealand had quakes in 2010/11 I was inundated with requests for up-to-date information and I ended up writing many travel webpages for prestigious travel companies and airlines]
• Don’t forget the adage of ‘Show, don’t tell’ and as Stephen King will tell you, when you read ‘On Writing‘, lose the lazy ‘ly’ words, so ditch the adverbs and flowery descriptions and find the perfect verb instead.
• Sometimes, others would say always, end with a punch or at least capture the point of the story. Don’t dare say you ‘can’t wait to return’ – it’s been done to death.
• When your piece is complete, read it out loud. Edit. Read again. Run the spell-checker, and your eye, over the piece, (I print to read from) put your work aside for some hours or days, or even weeks, then read it out loud again then, and only then send it to an editor. But, make sure you have read their publication again and again so you know their style, and if they ask for 800 words that means 800 words. Not 802 not 850 but 800. However, 790 or 736 is usually fine
• If they need photos, send your best half a dozen, and caption them. If they ask for one . . .  guess what, send one.
• And, some last points, don’t tell people what you going to write or you can lose the essence of the story. Be like the Nike ad’ and just do it
• Don’t write for free. Let me repeat that – don’t write for free. If it’s worth publishing, it’s worth paying for. You don’t need a portfolio to start, the editor is only interested in the piece in front of them: I know that from my travel editor days – for one year, for a now redundant Christchurch newspaper
• A supportive group of hardcore travel writers I know are discussing, on-line right now, how they hate people asking for advice and tips then don’t say THANK YOU within 24 hours – just saying! I say thanks to places who host me: I also send links to all the work I publish that mentions them, and a PDF of a piece I’ve written about ‘how to make the most of having hosted’ me. Once again, win-win.
• Start a blog, practice writing there, give it away there for free. I have had many invitations to events and countries (and that’s not easy when you live at the bottom of the world so fares are not cheap and time can be an issue) by people who have found me through my blog. And of course you need to be on all social media to urge those eyeballs to come over to read your blog. (See my links here)

See my three books here (two are travel, one about suicide grief)

Heather, the KiwiTravelWriter at work in Wurzburg

 

Wellington … my new city

Wellington: New Zealand’s creative capital is my new city.

And,  as a travel writer its good to be in such a vibrant place … I will be adding to the arts scene with my photography (exhibition – Thistle Hall, Cuba St, in late June 2011) and a Travel Writing Workshop (at Toi Poneke,  Abel Smith St 9th July 2011) Contact me for more details heather AT kiwitravelwriter.com

 

So,  this is what NZ tourism says about my new backyard ….

“Wellington – New Zealand’s capital city – is known as the nation’s arts and culture capital.

And, while it is the seat of government, there’s nothing grey about downtown Wellington with its lively café culture, quirky public art works, and distinctive Kiwi architecture.

As the home of Te Papa – the national museum and art gallery, Royal NZ Ballet, State Opera, NZ Symphony Orchestra, several professional theatres, and Sir Peter Jackson’s international film empire, Wellington is a city brimming with creative talent.

Two inner city university campuses add to the city’s youth and talent pool, and crowds drawn to major cultural events such as the annual World of WearableArt fuel the constant artistic buzz.

With all that, it’s no wonder that Lonely Planet dubbed Wellington as “the coolest little capital in the world” and listed it at #4 in cities to visit in 2011.

Dramatic harbour setting
Wellington’s compact café-filled central city – poised between the hills and a dramatic harbour setting – offers visitors more than its fair share of art galleries, museums, fashion and design boutiques, all within a short walk from each other.

The cityscape is one form of public art with its blend of old and new – from simple wooden colonial houses to imposing heritage buildings and post-modern architecture.

Noteworthy architecture includes the 19th century Parliamentary Library, the 1970s Beehive and the 21st century Supreme Court building. In Civic Square, old meets new to create a modern public piazza linked to the waterfront, close to the new Wharewaka / Māori canoe house and Te Papa’s imposing form.

The waterfront walkway and main shopping streets are populated with creative flair – quirky Wellington-themed art works, sculptures and a writers’ walk of quotations about the city.

Urban hum
Bars, nightclubs and restaurants hum into the early hours in Courtenay Place – the city’s main entertainment hub – alongside the stately St James theatre and cinemas, including the Embassy Theatre which hosted international film premières for The Lord of the Rings.

Wellington is renowned for its sophisticated food scene including more than 300 cafés, bars and restaurants, and claims more places to eat and drink per capita than New York.

Wellington’s top restaurants – and some of New Zealand’s finest dining establishments – include Matterhorn, Logan Brown and Martin Bosley’s, where the focus is on fresh, seasonal, local food.

Guided food tours introduce visitors to gourmet food stores, coffee roasters, cafés and restaurants.

Boutiques for New Zealand fashion design names, including Voon, Robyn Mathieson, Starfish, Andrea Moore and Alexandra Owen, populate the shopping precincts of Victoria and Featherston streets, while Cuba St is the face of emerging designers.

Galleries and museums
Wellington is home to numerous galleries and museums, including Te Papa Tongarewa – the national museum of New Zealand, the City Gallery, and the Museum of City and Sea – each with their own store of creative works from New Zealanders past and present.

Te Papa is a contemporary museum of innovative and interactive displays – beloved by adults and children alike – that showcases New Zealand’s diverse art and visual culture in collections featuring wildlife, history, Māori culture, contemporary art and culture.

Museum of Wellington City and Sea, in a significant waterfront heritage building, offers an insight into the city’s social and cultural history.

Film and theatre scene
Wellington’s thriving theatre and film scene has produced some of New Zealand’s best known actors, performers, film and television industry professionals.

Often referred to as ‘Wellywood’, Wellington is the home of film director Sir Peter Jackson and his production facility, and was a location for The Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong. The latest production underway is The Hobbit.

Weta Cave offers a behind-the-scenes look at the special effects used in the Jackson movies, including film interviews with Weta co-founders Peter Jackson, Richard Taylor, Tania Rodger and Jamie Selkirk. The mini museum showcases characters, props and displays from more than 20 years of Weta history.

Visitors can take LOTR location tours, or self-drive to the more accessible locations.

Cultural events
Wellington’s calendar of large scale international events includes the World of WearableArt awards and the International Arts Festival.

WOW – a spectacular show where fashion and art collide – attracts entries from more than 300 international designers that show to sell-out crowds over a 10-night period.”

 

So, as a travel writer its good to be in such a vibrant place … I will be adding to the arts scene with my photography (exhibition Thistle Hall, Cuba St, in late June 2011) and a Travel Writing Workshop (at Toi Poneke,  Abel Smith St 9th July 2011) Contact me for more details heather AT kiwitravelwriter.com