What I Learned About How to Approach Freelancing Setbacks from Failing at Vacation

Over the holidays, I seriously failed at vacation.
Not in the way that many of us feel that we do, when we discover something with an amazing story and our unsuspecting friends and relatives get stuck listening to a half-hour lecture on the lives of potters in ancient Greece from a local we’ve decided is an excellent source.
Nor in the way that many of us also struggle with—cutting the laptop/phone umbilical cord.
Well, to be fair, I certainly am guilty of that on this trip as well, but since I’ve been doing that since long before I met my husband, back Thanksgiving meant my friends and roommates would endure six weeks before the actual event of fiendishly testing, photographing and blogging recipes every moment I wasn’t at my day job.
This year, I failed at vacation in a way that feels worse precisely because it isn’t as “simple” as deciding whether to or to not be on one’s laptop.
Join Us This Week for Free Travel Writing Lessons on Writing for Travel Companies and Getting Work Done on the Road
In the two years since we began running regular one-hour travel writing classes, we’ve covered more than 80 topics, including:
- how to land free trips
- how to get paid really, really well for your writing
- how to get on magazine editors’ good sides
- how to navigate every step of the process to land travel content marketing work, including phone calls and proposals
- how to keep your hourly rate down so your bank account goes up
- how to get work done on the road
- how to write, step-by-step, 15 different types of travel articles
- how to land guidebook and other traditional publishing deals
You can grab access to all of our past webinars (and a ton of other resources you can’t find anywhere else) with a subscription to our Dream Buffet or grab them one-by-one when you need them in our On-Demand Webinar Library for a set with the video, audio, transcript, and slides.
But we also air a free replay of one of our travel writing classes each and every weekday.
Daily Free Travel Writing Webinars for February
You can now stream all of our past webinars–one each weekday–for free.
These webinars are only available at the times listed, live, but you can catch the replay in video, audio, and transcript form, along with the webinar slides, at any time in our on-demand webinar library.
Check out the full schedule of February’s webinars and register for your favorites below.
Join Us This Week for Free Travel Writing Lessons on Tourism Board Blogging and Crafting a Pitch
In the two years since we began running regular one-hour travel writing classes, we’ve covered more than 80 topics, including:
- how to land free trips
- how to get paid really, really well for your writing
- how to get on magazine editors’ good sides
- how to navigate every step of the process to land travel content marketing work, including phone calls and proposals
- how to keep your hourly rate down so your bank account goes up
- how to get work done on the road
- how to write, step-by-step, 15 different types of travel articles
- how to land guidebook and other traditional publishing deals
You can grab access to all of our past webinars (and a ton of other resources you can’t find anywhere else) with a subscription to our Dream Buffet or grab them one-by-one when you need them in our On-Demand Webinar Library for a set with the video, audio, transcript, and slides.
But we also air a free replay of one of our travel writing classes each and every weekday.
Join Us This Week for Free Travel Writing Lessons on Making Money with Content Marketing and Managing Your Time and Travel Goals
In the two years since we began running regular one-hour travel writing classes, we’ve covered more than 80 topics, including:
- how to land free trips
- how to get paid really, really well for your writing
- how to get on magazine editors’ good sides
- how to navigate every step of the process to land travel content marketing work, including phone calls and proposals
- how to keep your hourly rate down so your bank account goes up
- how to get work done on the road
- how to write, step-by-step, 15 different types of travel articles
- how to land guidebook and other traditional publishing deals
You can grab access to all of our past webinars (and a ton of other resources you can’t find anywhere else) with a subscription to our Dream Buffet or grab them one-by-one when you need them in our On-Demand Webinar Library for a set with the video, audio, transcript, and slides.
But we also air a free replay of one of our travel writing classes each and every weekday.
How to Pitch Five Magazines Looking for Round-Up Departments
Welcome to the Friday Freebie Five, a new weekly feature on Dream of Travel Writing’s Six Figure Travel Writer blog.
Each week, we comb our Travel Magazine Database to bring you five magazine sections open to freelancers around a theme–front-of-book trend pieces, long-form first-person features, short narrative postcards–to inspire your pitches.
Asian Geographic
“Revealed” takes the form of a round up focusing on something interesting from different Asian countries. In third person, these run from 300 to 500 words as each item is described briefly. Examples include “Iconic Games of Asia,” which rounds up 12 games, such as polo and chess, which originated in Asian destinations, “Ideals and Identities,” describing the flags and national flowers from 10 Southeast Asian countries, and “Homemade Moonshine,” which describes the rice wine enjoyed in Myanmar and rounds up five other types of rice wine made across neighboring countries.
Join Us This Week for Free Travel Writing Lessons on Managing Your Freelance Writing Finances and Mapping Out Your Travel Writing Success
In the two years since we began running regular one-hour travel writing classes, we’ve covered more than 80 topics, including:
- how to land free trips
- how to get paid really, really well for your writing
- how to get on magazine editors’ good sides
- how to navigate every step of the process to land travel content marketing work, including phone calls and proposals
- how to keep your hourly rate down so your bank account goes up
- how to get work done on the road
- how to write, step-by-step, 15 different types of travel articles
- how to land guidebook and other traditional publishing deals
You can grab access to all of our past webinars (and a ton of other resources you can’t find anywhere else) with a subscription to our Dream Buffet or grab them one-by-one when you need them in our On-Demand Webinar Library for a set with the video, audio, transcript, and slides.
But we also air a free replay of one of our travel writing classes each and every weekday.
How to Pitch Five Magazines Looking for Consumer Travel Tips
Welcome to the Friday Freebie Five, a new weekly feature on Dream of Travel Writing’s Six Figure Travel Writer blog.
Each week, we comb our Travel Magazine Database to bring you five magazine sections open to freelancers around a theme–front-of-book trend pieces, long-form first-person features, short narrative postcards–to inspire your pitches.
Travel + Leisure Southeast Asia
“Upgrade” is a collection of service articles aiming to improve the experience of traveling or educate the reader on a topic. There are about six articles in this section which are written by different contributors. They can be written in second or third person and are about 250 words long. Quotes are sometimes included from an expert on the topic. Examples include a piece on voluntourism vacations had short write-ups of 19 different companies offering this type of trip, an article about ecotourism including 20 short reviews of different green hotels and resorts, apps and gadgets, and a piece about making friends while traveling included blurbs about particularly friendly countries, apps for meeting people and activities conducive to striking up new friendships.
12 Days of Holiday Specials Day 12: A Baker’s Dozen of Classes to Learn How to Write Every Kind of Travel Article Out There

Today’s holiday trivia: “Nollaig na mBan” or “Women’s Little Christmas” is a tradition celebrated by women across Ireland on January 6. Hearkening back to the days when large families were the norm and men weren’t expected to help around the home, Women’s Little Christmas represented the one day each year when women would finally get a break. To this day, men take over the housework on January 6, while women hold parties or go out to celebrate the day with their friends, sisters, mothers, and aunts.
Beginning in January of 2018 and continuing throughout much of the year, we embarked on a multi-month webinar series with a very special goal in mind: to provide university-style writing training in how to write each of the different types of articles you may be tasked with as a professional travel writer.
We walked through a part of the writing process–structuring your articles–that should come before your fingers hit the keyboard and before you even begin researching your piece to show you how to quit second-guessing yourself and save tremendous time on your articles.
Join Us This Week for Free Travel Writing Lessons on Marketing Your Non-Fiction Book and Becoming a Part of an Editor’s Stable
In the two years since we began running regular one-hour travel writing classes, we’ve covered more than 80 topics, including:
- how to land free trips
- how to get paid really, really well for your writing
- how to get on magazine editors’ good sides
- how to navigate every step of the process to land travel content marketing work, including phone calls and proposals
- how to keep your hourly rate down so your bank account goes up
- how to get work done on the road
- how to write, step-by-step, 15 different types of travel articles
- how to land guidebook and other traditional publishing deals
You can grab access to all of our past webinars (and a ton of other resources you can’t find anywhere else) with a subscription to our Dream Buffet or grab them one-by-one when you need them in our On-Demand Webinar Library for a set with the video, audio, transcript, and slides.
But we also air a free replay of one of our travel writing classes each and every weekday.







