SiteThank God Something’s Gone Wrong
Okay, my name is Alison Stein Wellner, and I’ll admit that I’m the BlackBerry addicted writer that Diana traveled to India with last week. I love the infernal device, not just because it helps me to stay in touch with home wherever I am in the world –a huge benefit since I’m on the road at least 10 days a month– but also because I take my notes on it, which saves me soooo much transcription time.
So as Diana mentioned, we were out to a lovely dinner in Bombay when our waiter lost his grip on a tray of appetizers and sloshed sauce on my ‘Berry, which I was using to take notes on our meal. Shortly afterwards, the device stopped working. Disaster!
Or was it? When you’re on vacation, the last thing you want is for something to go wrong, but for a travel writer, trouble is a big opportunity, in several different ways.
- You’re gathering useful information for a service story. I’m certainly not the only person who has had a key piece of electronic equipment go on the fritz on a long trip –so if I decide to write a story about this, I’ve at least got a compelling anecdote for my query. In the course of trying to revive my phone, I tried everything from impromptu YouTube inspired surgery, to trying to rent a replacement phone.
- You get to see how people react to the unexpected. A crisis of any magnitude gives you a unique opportunity to evaluate how a hotel, restaurant, or tour operator responds when things go awry. It will also likely take you to places off the typical tourist itinerary –cell phone repair shops, police stations, hospitals, and so on –which can give you a glimpse behind the cultural curtain.
- You have the seeds of a great story. To have a narrative, you need to have conflict –a gap that’s opened up between expectation and reality. The bigger the disaster, the better the story. (What if you were bitten by a snake? In a city with a major earthquake? Scary! But as a writer, that’s paydirt.) Honestly, I’m not sure that my phone woes are enough of a basis for a narrative, but hey, it’s something to think about. Which leads me to my last point…
- You have a good reason not to freak out. No, I wasn’t thrilled about a key piece of equipment’s ruination. But I had a choice: I could get upset, or I could grab a pad and a pen from the hotel, and start to take notes on the situation. Before long, I was seeing this phone snafu as an adventure–and a potential story. To quote Nora Ephron, “it’s all copy”.
Oh, by the way, I’m thrilled to announce that I’ll start teaching a class here on travel writing in May. In the meantime if you have any thoughts or questions on this or any aspect of travel writing, feel free to post ‘em here or email me directly (alison at wellner.biz) and I’ll take a shot at answering!
6 Responses to “Thank God Something’s Gone Wrong”
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DianaBurrell
Said this on March 25th, 2008 at 3:52pm:I’m so excited Alison’s teaching this course. It felt like I got a Master’s Degree in travel writing watching Alison at work in India; I can’t wait to see what she’s got planned for the class.
I had no idea Nora Ephron gets credit for, “It’s all copy.” Too true.
LindaFormichelli
Said this on March 25th, 2008 at 5:57pm:Alison, I hate this expression, but: “I smell an essay!”
This reminds me of when my hubby and I were living in The Netherlands for 6 months and we drove a rental car to Paris. Our car was towed — on a Saturday when the impound lot was closed for the weekend, and I needed to get back to work on Monday. At first, we thought the car had been stolen, because the police had no record of the towing. I got to practice my French — I know how to say, “Parking was not forbidden there!” — and it makes a great story.
Megan
Said this on March 26th, 2008 at 4:53pm:Okay, I have a question! Well…maybe two.
Tell me the truth: does travel writing ever get tiring? I have friends who are destination wedding photographers and they started out thinking it was going to be “so cool” to get to travel to a lot of exotic locations on someone else’s dime….but the reality of flight schedules, lost luggage, time zone changes and being constantly away from home soon kicked in and travel suddenly didn’t look so swell after all.
Secondly, is travel writing something you have to specialize in, or is it a field that could be dabbled in on occasion? I’ve always been fascinated by different peoples and places, but (see above) I’m not sure it is something I could commit to doing non-stop.
DianaBurrell
Said this on March 26th, 2008 at 4:58pm:I hope Alison will jump in here to answer your question, Megan. As for me, I don’t think of myself as a travel writer, but a food writer who travels for a good story. I know travel writers who are on the road two or three weeks a month. That’s not for me. My style is more like three or four trips a year.
AlisonSteinWellner
Said this on March 26th, 2008 at 6:44pm:Great questions, Megan. And oh my yes, traveling a lot can be totally tiring!
Like anything in life,traveling has its drawbacks. Homesickness is part of the territory for me on every trip, it’s one of my costs of doing business. I do think you need a certain amount of hardiness– a certain level of tolerance for being annoyed, and the ability to handle things changing without getting too upset about it, to be able to enjoy life spent on the road. It’s definitely not for everyone.
For me, the rewards far outweigh the drawbacks, though. Every time I’m landing somewhere new, I have a little internal “yipee!”. And I still can’t believe that this gets to be how I make my living. If I ever stopped feeling that way,and if traveling ever got to be a big drag, I would stop doing it.
This is why many travel writers create guidelines for themselves about how much time they spend away versus how much time they spend at home. (This is something we’ll talk about in my travel writing workshop, by the way!) For myself, I try to stick to not more than 10 days away a month, which means I’m with my husband and friends and my at-home life two-thirds of the time. This also gives me time at home to process and do my best writing. (I write on the road too, but I can really focus the best when I’m home.) I am not always successful at keeping to that limit, but I find my life works best that way.
As for the question of whether you can “dabble”, as Diana’s comment indicates, absolutely, many writers incorporate travel stories into their mix of stories. (There’s a whole fascinating semantic distinction between “travel writers” and “writers who travel”…too much for me to get into in this little comment, maybe I’ll do a post on that next.)
The only cautionary note I’d sound here is that people who haven’t traveled much (for writing or vacation or otherwise) can lack a certain perspective on what they’re seeing. It’s a weakness that one can certainly work around, through careful research. But I have to say, for calibrating that all- important internal bullshit detector, there’s no substitute for direct experience.
I also find that I gain a lot of insight into places I’ve been when I travel somewhere new. For example, I found new ways of thinking about Buenos Aires when I was in Cape Town (both considered the most European cities on their respective continents), and new insights into the time I spent in Hong Kong last March, when I was in Bombay last week.
So what I’m saying is that there are cumulative benefits to writers who can spend a lot of time on the road, but it’s not a deal breaker if you can’t.
Megan
Said this on March 27th, 2008 at 1:21pm:Thanks, Alison. Great information!