The Renegade Writer Blog

Megan asks: I have an intense desire to get into travel writing because I love learning about different cultures and locations, both historically and in a modern sense.  However, I know that dreams don’t always fit reality and being constantly on the road would not be the ideal situation for my family life.  Is it necessary to specialize in travel writing or are there opportunities for the occasional travel story for unspecialized writers?

I’ve been thinking about your question, Megan, and I have a short answer and a longer one. The short answer is: no, it’s not necessary to specialize, you can certainly write occasional travel stories, and there are many writers that incorporate a travel story or two into their writing practice each year. You can plan to take a certain number of  research trips each year for stories as fits your lifestyle, or you can do a little advance preparation and carve out some time on your family vacation for research and reporting. We spend a great deal of time talking about trip planning, preparation and research in my upcoming travel writing workshop.

The longer answer is that travel is such a broad field –really, it’s more of a verb than it is a noun, if you think about it –so a writer that “specializes in travel” is different than a writer that specializes in say, writing about business, or writing about health. Travel is more of a mode of research than a subject to write about, which is why there are plenty of writers who spend a great deal of time on the road, who never write a story that you’d consider travel, per se –they’re writing profiles, narratives, essays and so on. And there are also travel writers who write about their hometown, and only rarely spend a night away from home.

I would say that most of the people you think of as travel writers –myself included –do spend time researching stories in places far from home.  But that on its own doesn’t give you the advantages of a specialty.  As others have pointed out, a writer that specializes is more efficient: you get to know the key players in the field, you get to know what’s been written about and what hasn’t, you build relationships with editors, and so on.  In travel writing, you’d have to pick a more narrow specialty to realize those advantages.  You might focus on a specific type of travel experience, such as adventure travel, family travel, culinary travel. Or you might focus on a geographic region.

As my past students can tell you, I strongly believe that writers should start from our own interests, and plan our careers out from there.  So it’s worth thinking about what you really want from travel, and what you really want from travel writing. If you have an intense desire for travel, and to pursue travel writing, I have every confidence that you will find a way to make it work for you. –Alison Stein Wellner

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