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So you think you want to be a travel writer?
I’m not a travel writer by any stretch of the imagination, although I have written travel articles. However, I do regularly fantasize about all-expenses-paid trips to places like Dubai and Estonia … hey, I’m just not a Paris kind of girl. This post by travel writer Lara Dunston screwed my head on straight. No way could I hole up in a hotel room in Milan and write. [db]
5 Responses to “So you think you want to be a travel writer?”
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laradunston
Said this on June 19th, 2008 at 4:38am:Hey renegadewriter, thanks for the shout-out!
You’re right. It’s true. To put it bluntly, sometimes being a travel writer really sucks. It hasn’t been so bad in Milan so far because of the dreadful weather - it was so much cosier in here than outside in the rain - but now we have blue skies and Terry is out taking photos and I’m in here writing… it’s miserable. And we’ve had to do this many times before - in Brussels, Amsterdam, Buenos Aires…
But I’ve got to look on the bright side: we’ve been to these cities before and we WILL be back. Our attitude is very different to the average traveller who goes to a place thinking “I may never get here again”; we just finished a few weeks on the road driving around lovely Calabria southern Italy; this book will be done in a few days and I’ll be running around all over Milan’s chic streets next week (and I’ve just found out we have tickets to La Scala next week, so you can expect a more positive post today!); soon after that we’ll have a month driving all over Northern Italy, we’ll have another couple of months holed up somewhere writing; but then after that we have a few months on the road in Australia, driving through the outback through some of Australia’s most stunning landscapes and by spectacular coastline…
As I said in my post yesterday, who’s going to listen to a travel writer complain?
laradunston
Said this on June 19th, 2008 at 1:44pm:Hi there, I’ve just linked to you: http://cooltravelguide.blogspot.com/2008/06/life-of-travel-writer-when-travel_19.html
Jen A. Miller
Said this on June 23rd, 2008 at 12:59pm:I thought about this the other day. I wrote a regional travel guide and was visiting a friend who was on vacation in that area. She said “it must be great to be here all the time.” Actually, I thought, since the summer, I have never once been on the beach. It’s tough work, even if you’re writing about a place you love.
DianaBurrell
Said this on June 23rd, 2008 at 1:08pm:Jen, totally agree. I was in India on assignment for 12 days this spring. I love everything about Indian food, which my story was about — but eventually, it got tiring eating like a food writer instead of eating like an appreciative tourist. Had to photograph food, write down menu items, dissect the recipes, etc. Of course that SOUNDS like fun to gringos, but the truth is more complex.
Thanks for the link, Lara. Glad the sun’s out in Milan.
Vacation blogger
Said this on July 17th, 2008 at 1:26pm:Everyone thinks Man it would be sweet to go places and write about them. Like Diana said, it’s not nearly the same when you visit just a a tourist. It gets to be like a job even though you are in another part of the world. thanks for your comments.