The Flourishing Travel Creator

All Posts Tagged: free stuff

How to Be Independently Awesome No Matter What is Going on on Your Press Trips

Photo by Myles Tan on Unsplash

After our webinar last week on how to lay the groundwork before your press trips to make sure you’re prepared to get the most article research for the most stories done when you’re in the destination, I received an unusual email.

A writer that I know that has attended our weekend Pitchapalooza retreat in the past wrote me with the subject line “THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.”

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A Very Special Webinar with Guests from Two Tourism Boards!

Photo by Cole Hutson on Unsplash

In the first webinar in our series on conducting interviews that take your stories to the next level, I talked about the very first interview that I ever did for my first blog with the editor of mega food website Epicurious.

At the time, to prepare for the interview, I read articles on tons of general journalism websites about how to prepare interview questions, and I dutifully wrote, re-wrote, re-worded, scraped, re-wrote, and re-worded all of my questions until I was sure I had the perfect set.

But when I was doing the actual interview, it lacked energy, connection, and opportunities to get great quotes because I was so focused on my prepared questions.

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How Introducing Characters to Your Pieces Will Take Your Writing to the Next Level


In interviews and on panels at conferences, editors are often asked what they’d like to see in pitches.

The most common answer–that the writer is familiar with the magazine and pitching an idea that would actually work–we discuss regularly here.

But the one many editors also share (and secretly wish they could talk more about rather than the very basic pitching essential about) is that they want you to pitch them a story. With characters.

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Why Interviews Are Secretly the Answer to Everything You’re Struggling with in Your Travel Writing

No matter what the question is, there is a recurring refrain that I hear from freelance travel writers struggling to earn their desired income.

Whether the question is:

  • how often are you sending pitches?
  • why aren’t you sending more pitches?
  • how long does it take you to write a pitch?
  • what is keeping you income low if you already have a full load of clients they have?
  • what is keeping you from writing for bigger and better outlets

It always comes back to time.

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