Don’t Let the Haters Sell You on These 3 Mega Myths About Freelance Travel Writing
It’s a breath of fresh air to see more and more websites talking about six-figure freelance writing. Particularly six-figure freelance travel writing, as a reality rather than a pipe dream, but I am still shocked by the various ways people who are not successful freelance writers deride the profession.
Editors Have Needs. Please Fill Them.
Let’s turn your usual visions of editors around. Rather than envisioning an editor:
- seeing an email come in from someone they don’t know and either ignoring or deleting it;
- finding something fundamentally wrong with your subject line and deleting your email without reading it;
- opening your email, checking if you have any clips from national magazines and deleting it when they find none;
- reading your email, liking the idea, and then sending it off to one of his or her writers to work on
Why Do We Need Travel Writers? Why Do You Need to Be One?
Don George, editor of Lonely Planet’s annual travel anthologies and author of the seminal travel writing handbook Travel Writing: Expert Advice from the World’s Leading Travel Publisher, sat down with close friend, Jeff Greenwald, author of six books on his travel adventures and founder of EthicalTraveler.org, to talk about what it means to be a travel writer with a flourishing business.
Which of These 3 Types of Travel Writer Are You?
When I start any conversation with someone who wants to be a travel writer, or has been trying to make a career in travel writing for a while and isn’t getting any traction, first and foremost, I ask:
Why are you doing this in the first place?
WTF Are You Doing with Your Travel Writing Time?
I have to ask.
What did you do today?
Do you know? Is that because it just happened? Let’s try a harder one.
What did you do during your work hours last Monday?
People Die of Exposure – Why Give Away Your Work For It?
I will never stop being surprised that brand new websites and magazines continue to post ads on Craigslist, BloggingPro, ProBlogger and other writing job sites asking people to write for them for free in exchange for “writing exposure.”
Having started websites myself and consulted for many others, I promise you that any website so new that it is hiring people to write its content doesn’t have any more readers for you to be “exposed” to than you would if you just went and started your own blog.
You’d probably have more eyeballs on your own, actually.
An Important Public Service Announcement About Following Up on Your Freelance Pitches
This week, I wanted to take a minute for an important travel-writing public service announcement on following up with editors after a pitch!
But this topic is not only near and dear to my heart because it is a such a big deal for writers, but as it seems like we are reaching a certain tipping point here that doesn’t have a good solution.
Redefining (Walter) Mittyesque – Let’s See Your New Resume
The Ben Stiller-directed “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” came out in 2013. Instagram hit the scene in late 2010.
Watching the film today, the cinematography oozes shots that we now think of as Instagram tropes: packing flat-lays, travelers in profile walking in front of brilliantly painted walls, a lone traveler in a long shot on an otherwise empty road. Just cue the overlaid text of the Robert Frost poem.
One Sunday night, however, we knew that “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” was just what we needed.
We had an intensive Saturday of soul-searching and Sunday of planning our first Detox + Reset retreat and Walter Mitty came up as a frequent touchpoint throughout the weekend. On the one hand, for the gorgeous visuals (we didn’t see the Instagram-style until re-watching it now!), but, more importantly for the character and journey of Walter Mitty.
You Only Get One First Impression–How Not to Botch It
Do you struggle with how to tell people what you do or how to introduce yourself at networking events (in a travel writing context that is)?
It is an unfortunate paradox for travel writers. On the one hand, we have a job so “cool” that it often seems like everyone wants to do it. But at the same time, a lot of people—often even the same people that say they would love to be travel writers—act like this profession is not really a job…it’s a hobby.
When Was the Last Time You Met a Travel Magazine Editor?
I’ve previously attended the Book Passage Travel Writers and Photographers Conference and I’m always delighted to see the seats full of writers, who already have a flourishing business with travel writing as their full-time occupation or are on their way there.
But even more than hearing their stories of taking the leap, quitting their previous professions, and making travel writing work for them, I loved seeing them interact with editors.
It is so easy to have an “us vs. them” mentality about editors as a freelance writer.