Anyone trying to be a writer these days needs a website or a blog, perhaps both. That goes double for a potential travel writer. Trying to sell your writing means trying to sell yourself, and these days, that means having an electronic presence, whether you want to sell hard copy (print) or otherwise. Your site (and/or blog) is where someone can go to check you out, since few editors bother to look in Who's Who any longer. (Full disclosure here: I don't have a site or a blog myself, as I am not trying to sell anything to anybody these days.)
If you are freelancing, you should also be working on a book, as having a book under your belt makes you an expert, ipso facto. I'll get into authoring books later in this series, but right now want to mention memoirs or diaries, which you should be keeping in connection with your travel writing objective.
Blogs (short for web logs) are nothing more than diaries or journals, practically electronic mirrors in which you can tell yourself in writing how wonderful you are and let the rest of the world know at the same time. Nobody keeps diaries locked up any longer, as teenage girls were once wont to do. The big problem is not in writing the blog, but in getting someone to come there and read it. I've even seen handwritten tag posters on New York City telephone poles begging "Please Come to My Amazing Website," a pathetic indication of how hard it is to get an audience. (According to Google, there were more than 768,000,000 blogs out there as of January 25, 2008.)
You should write your memoir or author your blog as though you are creating a piece for an editor to read, and to do so, you must treat it as a constructed creative piece that aims to grasp a reader's attention, entertain the reader (editor) and tell a satisfying story. Forget about chronological detail, which interests nobody but the narcissistic author. After all, life is just one damn thing after another, so you can't include every detail. Even you would find it boring to read every little thing that transpired during your day after once you had written it down.
When I lived in London, I had an American friend who visited me annually, spending a month at my place. He went his way, I worked by day and met him occasionally for dinner out somewhere. After the meal, I returned home and he went out to experience London nightlife, often returning home just before the time I was getting up to go to work again. But prior to turning in each morning, he would repair to his room, pull out his trusty portable typewriter (these were pre-computer days) and begin writing what turned out to be a massive description of London nightlife he had experienced, chronologically and in painful detail.
"What are you planning to do with this?" I asked after plowing through a few pages.
"Nothing, it's only for my memories," he said.
"Just as well," I thought, as the tedious detail made the few bits of fun in the script hard to find and somewhat of a letdown in any case.
Other authors came out with books on London nightlife that were fact filled and occasionally amusing to read, but not my friend. He was reporting his own progress through the clubs and bars of Soho, and wasn't in the least concerned with a potential reader, or entertaining the reader (and editor). This was a one-man show, eyes-only. He is gone, and so is his manuscript, unread by anyone.
Your memoir or blog can be different, if you shape it and use artistic license (that old cliché) to enhance its appeal. To do this, you'll grab the attention of the reader (like an editor) in the first sentence, and keep his/her attention throughout the tale you will weave from your real experiences, but condensed, arranged and tweaked to make them into a real story.
Many of us have had someone say, "You should write your life story" and it's true, we should. But most of us don't, so the few who do have a better chance at capturing the attention of the public when their memoirs appear. Don't worry that nobody will care -- if you want to write, get started. You don't have to be a celebrity to have the credentials to write -- by living your unique life, you have the authority to tell it better than anyone else could. You need not be a champion runner to enjoy jogging, you just do it. It's the same with writing, do so for its own sake.
Dorothy Gallagher, author of How I Came Into My Inheritance and Other True Stories, tells of finding her cousin Meyer's memoir after his death, and of taking events in his life to use in her book. She condensed his hundred pages "in the way you would reduce a sauce," and adjusted them, appropriating his story and improving on it. As quoted in the New York Times, she says, if Meyer returned from the dead to object, she would answer him: "But cousin, your life lingered in hardly anyone's memory. Now, because I have used you, more people have read your story than you ever could have dreamed. Cousin, you live, even if you dance to my tune."
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On your website or blog, include your memoir, but only after you have shaped it, edited it and made it into an interesting story. It will still be the truth, but without all the boring details that nobody wants to read about. You will have digested and condensed your story into a readable and entertaining tale, fit for an intelligent audience and worthy of a fine piece of publishing. Then, if you do want to sell something, you will have a carefully constructed piece to show an editor, to give a sense of your talent and craftsmanship.
This is the fourth in a series on "How to Be a Travel Writer." The author, a contributing editor and columnist for Frommers.com, is a former editor-in-chief of the Fodor Travel Guides, a former president of the Society of American Travel Writers and director of the British Guild of Travel Writers. He teaches his Key West Travel Writing Workshop every January and February in that Florida resort. Details at www.heritagehousemuseum.org.
