• before you visit any location, check the expiration date of your passport, and buy your ticket for a foreign adventure, get focused on what you want to do with the information you'll receive. as travel writers you have obligations to the reader to provide information and entertainment.
• as you plan the trip, whether it's to tacoma or timbuktu, begin thinking like a travel writer. travel writers make plans, contact publications (for magazine work), and research areas before leaving.
• here are some questions to ask, with recommendations, to ponder before you leave home. it's your job to do so.
  • am i excited about the location? determine a place you, personally, really want to visit and write about.
  • for book projects, what publishers do i know (by studying market guides and reviewing other travel books) that might publish a book on my topic? many publishing houses that produce travel books have specific markets. your adventure and historical travel saga of retracing hannibal's footsteps, called 'traveling on elephant through the alps', may or may not be of interest to a publisher that only produces destination books.

  • for magazine work, what publications, newsletters, or magazines, might be interested in my travel piece? a full-color spread in travel & leisure is a great goal to shoot for, but smaller publications are often far more writer-friendly. refer to the market guides and note the publications you can realistically query.
  • how much time do I have to visit the location and then write the article/book? if you're retired or aren't committed to a specific time frame (and have sufficient funds), you can be far more flexible than another writer who must get back to a day job on monday.

  • is the location really in my budget? figure out what you can afford. sure it's fun to fantasize about a luxury cruise and how you might write about your adventure among the rich and overfed. but if you only have enough extra money to take the dingy out of the garage for a day on the local lake, you'll have to nix that grand idea. yes, you may be able to deduct expenses of a first-class cruise as part of your travel writing business, but you'll have to pay for the trip well before tax time may give you any breaks.

  • this doesn't mean you can't visit and write about incredible locations and experiences—it does mean that you'll have to take the longer trip on your annual vacation or write about destinations that are closer to home.
  • what research must be done before I can go? it's foolish to head off to the wilds of anywhere without a travel itinerary and some basic information about the location.
  • who is my reader and what will he or she want to know? always keep your reader in mind. you must consider your trip planning from various personality angles. what would a teacher from trenton like to read about the location you're planning to visit? if a firefighter from fairview went there, what would this person want to learn or see? and if a lawyer from lowell reads your article (or book), what will keep him or her glued to the page? travel writers keep their readers in mind at all times.


making a plan:

• start with a wish list of everything you want to see or experience before you leave home. select the topics that pique your interest. do some initial research and contact the people with whom you'll need to connect to get information for a story.
• your itinerary should include the "must see/experience" places and activities, "nice to see/experience" places and activities, and then a list of other stuff that could be interesting.
• schedule time in your plan to include the unexpected. when on location many travel writers schedule about four hours of work time each day. we love to have fun and squeeze in the stuff that comes out of the blue. often that time is very well spent because we find a more incredible place to write about.
• add into your timeline how many hours it takes to get to the location, "settling in" time (that is, getting to your hotel and orientating yourself), and visiting and interviewing too. add in extra hours. don't make your itinerary so tight that you can't accomplish all your goals. everything takes longer than you imagine when you're sitting in front of your computer putting together your plan.
• keep your itinerary in a notebook, such as your travel journal, and leave enough room so you can add between the lines.

looking beneath the surface for something new:

• the more truth you tell, the better the writing will be. besides, that's what your reader wants. he or she needs the whole story, especially the difficult parts, uncomfortable parts, and scary parts.
• work to find unique areas of the places you're visiting. if you are visiting the american rose society gardens in shreveport, louisiana, you can't just talk in general terms about the garden. it's been done or at the very least the reader will feel like he or she's read it before. an editor won't buy this rehashed topic, either.
• get creative and scratch beneath the layer where other writers stop. ask yourself what you'd really want to read about, then make some phone calls and ask friends or other writers the same questions.
• as you look beneath the surface, you'll learn things that you'll want to share with readers. for instance, imagine that you're planning to go to a little-visited spot in greenland as you write on the quiet locations throughout the world. your book, to be called 'in search of silence', will feature greenland's less populated territory as one spot. however, getting transportation to this location, you find right off, is a chore. it's expensive and time consuming. no direct flights from oak hollow, oregon to one hundred miles north of thule, greenland. although the internet is pretty incredible, you learn you cannot click on www.greenland.com and get everything you need. further, typical bookstore travel destination books are not readily available to give you information. even before you go, you already know something that needs to be included in your book—the details on travel planning to get to the locations you're mentioning in the text. don't overlook what you think is the obvious. the reader needs to know the truth and all of it.
• when you write about the downside of an experience or location, you must tell the truth, but you can work around being hurtful. let's say you're writing a roundup of coffeehouses in salt lake city. you know one that has great poetry readings and super bluegrass fiddle bands but the java is junk. if you rave about the other places, you needn't be rude to get your point across that the reader should stop at starbucks first before hitting that house. you could say, "at grinders, order a small cup of espresso and sip it throughout the evening of outstanding cowboy poetry and knee-slapping fiddle playing." the reader will understand.
• make notes of what you find as you begin planning trips and adventures. this information, told as only you can tell it, is invaluable.
• as a writer, you're naturally curious. use that characteristic to ask the questions your reader would if he or she were in the location. go beyond the typical ones. dig to get truthful, provocative, and interesting material.