Ready, Set, Go...

No, you’re not in a race. But it may seem like one if you’re a travel writer. What you’re actually doing is racing to find the most information in the least amount of time to use in as many articles as you can. Sounds like a tall order.  It doesn’t have to be if you’re organized.

Before you can get a go-ahead from one or more editors, you first have to research your subject, not your destination. Travel writing may seem like it’s about writing about places, but it’s really about writing about what’s at those places, and what the reader can do there. It’s really not about writing about your travel experience, but what the reader needs to know to enjoy a similar experience.

So before you begin, you have to know who your reader will be—young, old, married with a family, adventurer, or budget-conscious. Knowing who your reader will be will go a long way to helping you figure out what sort of information to collect. If you have multiple readers from different demographics, that means that the information you collect must be multifaceted. And to make the most profit from your work, you need to produce as much as you can from your research on a subject.

Before you approach editors, you’ll need to know what’s been done before on your subject. So instead of researching the subject, itself, you’ll need to research periodicals to find out how much has been done and when. If little or nothing has been done, then you might as well forget it. That often means readers aren’t interested. If a lot has been done, then, again, you might as well forget it, unless you have a very unique angle. Once you know what sort of market you have to work with, you’ll be able to query editors with your ideas.

In preparation for querying editors, brainstorm your subject. Try to think of as many different articles for the readers you’ve targeted as you can. Ask yourself questions. And based on what you discovered in your market research, come up with a dozen or more article ideas based on a general subject or destination.

It’s now time to do some preliminary subject research. For this, you’ll need to check a variety of sources–books, previous articles, the Internet. Get to know a bit about your subject so you can compose some intelligent queries. Then send them off to the publications you’ve chosen.

Once you hear back from editors, the fun begins. Now that you know what you’re going to be writing about, it’s time to start researching in earnest. Researching for the articles themselves requires that you go beyond books and the Internet. For travel writing, research requires that you travel to a place and talk to people and do things that your traveling readers would want to do—traveling there, staying in hotels, eating in restaurants, seeing the sights, enjoying entertainment. While you may not include all the information you obtain from your trip in your articles, you, nevertheless, have to make a note of it. You never know when you might want to use it in the future.

Before you go, you need to know as much about your destination as possible. And while you can read travel books on your destination, you may find other books, including novels set in the place, will give you a feel for it. The more you know before you go, the better you’ll be able to find unique information while there. You can even access your destination on Google Maps Street View and actually see the place where you’re going. Though you can only view it from the street or road, you’ll get an idea of what to expect when you get there.

You’ll also need to set up appointments with tourism people, curators of museums, and interesting persons related to your subject. Contact the local tourism department and ask for recommendations and possible help setting up appointments and interviews. They may be able to set up special tours or get you in to places that may be closed to the public temporarily. Remember, while it may be interesting to readers to write about special places or things to do, if they can’t do it when they travel there, it’s really no use to them.  Part of the downfall of many PBS travel shows—Globetrekker is a good example—is that they show too many things that readers just cannot do or places they can’t get into. Rick Steves’ series, on the other hand, is an excellent example of keeping viewers (or readers) in mind.

Now that you’ve done all your preliminary research, made your reservations, and purchased your tickets, it’s time to go. Once you arrive, you’ve got to be “on” every waking minute. You never know when the information you need will pop up unexpectedly.

Still think you want to dabble in travel writing?

P.S. And after you get home, you’ll want to collapse, but you can’t because you have to compile all your notes and such and get writing those articles. Soon it will be time to do it all over again. Not quite like a vacation, is it?

Staying Afloat Without a Paddle

As important as the quality of your writing is to freelancing, so should your financial base. Too many beginning writers only daydream about how wonderful it would be to strike out on their own and get paid for their writing. In order to stay afloat while freelancing, especially in the beginning while you’re opening markets and gathering clients, you must have money to pay your bills.

If you’ve ever bought a house, you know how careful you have to inspect it. Once you sign the sales agreement, you’re stuck with it, no matter what problems may arise. The same goes for severing the financial cord to your fill-time job. By doing thorough research and planning carefully, you’ll be able to concentrate on your writing and not have to worry about how you’re going to buy food or pay for heat and fuel for your car.

When I began freelancing, I decided that if I had to work part-time at any point in my freelance career that I would only get a job at something related to what I was doing. I figured that if I working thinking and working with writing or any of the subjects I wrote about then I might also gain some knowledge or insights to help me in my writing. I wrote about travel and tourism, so I worked as a travel agent. I wrote about the Internet and technology, so I learned to design Web sites for small businesses. I even did public relations writing—I got plenty of press releases and learned to write good ones from them.

But the job that has offered me the most opportunities was teaching what I loved to do best—writing. No, I didn’t teach in public school or college. Over the years, I’ve taught continued education courses at a number of colleges and universities as well as community evening schools in my area. I knew that I really couldn’t write all day and all night, so I scheduled my classes during the evening hours. No course is longer than eight weeks and each session runs for two hours. I work as an independent contractor, thus setting my own schedule and creating and writing my own courses. Once a course is “in the bag,” I just have to reap the profits.

The experience I gained teaching writing courses propelled me into an even more lucrative sideline—business writing workshops. I earn more in a six-hour day doing this than writing two or three articles. But instead of presenting these workshop constantly, I’m selective and only do them occasionally.

Another sideline related to my course work is lecturing. I’ve amassed loads of information on a variety of subjects, as well as photographs of the same. I began assembling these into one-hour lectures that I present at retirement centers and at conferences. Again, once a lecture is all assembled, it’s easy to draw from my inventory and reap the profits.

When, do you ask, do I have time to write? Believe it or not, I have a lot of time because I set my own schedule. All my teaching venues know that if something comes up, I may need to cancel a class and make it up later. All have been very accommodating. Plus, I get all sorts of ideas when teaching others.

My Web design business kicks in when times are slow. It takes a lot to put a good site together, so I take on only one client at a time. The pay is usually worth it.

During the recent economic downturn, my ability to turn a profit with my other ventures has paid off handsomely. All of these ventures come under the umbrella of Bob Brooke Communications, my brand name and the company I created.

Stringing Along

One way I got by early in my freelancing career was to become a stringer. The term stringing goes back to early newspaper days when a reporter's copy was "strung together," so the newspaper paid him—there weren’t very many female reporters back then—by the inch. Today, that term means working for a newspaper or magazine “from the field,” turning in ideas and stories to the editor either when I find them or when the editor sends me an assignment.

Each publication sets up its stringer network differently. Some stringers receive small retainers plus a fee for an article when the publication prints it. More often than not, publications forego the retainer in favor of a loose agreement as to the acceptance of pieces or guaranteeing a certain number of them will see publication throughout the year. Or the publication will just keep feeding me regular assignments with no guarantee—the most common practice. Either way, the editor knows the quality of my work and how to get hold of me fast.  In turn, I know what kind of stories they want and how to present them, including sending photos if needed. From experience, I know I can count on a certain amount of work each month which helps me plan my budget. What’s even better, I can string for several publications at the same time as long as they’re not competing for the same readers.

When I first started freelancing, it took a while to find a publication willing to take me on as a stringer. Just by luck, I was working as the manager of a mom-and-pop travel agency. A friend at another agency signed me up for a press trip to Guatemala at a trade show. At the time I wasn’t writing for any publication and needed an assignment to go on the trip. I cold called the managing editor of a travel trade magazine. She was interested in the destination and gave me an assignment to write about tourism there. Upon publication, I was to be paid a whopping $30. She liked my article so much, she started assigning me more of them. Soon, I was writing two or three articles a week for her. These pieces weren’t especially complicated to research or difficult to write, which left me time to try to get articles published in other publications.

Four years later, I had quit my day job as a travel agent and jumped head first into freelance writing. One morning I cold called the managing editor of the Philadelphia Business Journal—I live just outside the city—and explained that I had experience covering business topics (Isn’t tourism a business?) and was interested in writing for him. I pitched an idea to him, which he liked, and I got my first assignment. After completing several other assignments, he began to call on me every week, sometimes twice, to cover a variety of business stories. Some were news while others were features. He gave me feedback on my articles, telling me what he wanted or didn’t want. As time went on, he even told me who to call on for interviews and gave me their phone numbers. The Journal paid $160 for each article. In most cases, I had three or four days to complete a story from research to finished article. He knew I could turn a story around very fast and that he could count on me to be accurate. At the same time, I was still writing for my original travel trade publication.

While the per article amount may not seem like a lot in either case, it quickly became income I could count on while I tried to get published in national magazines.

Working for both publications, I amassed a tidy file of contacts in business and tourism. I knew who to call for what and could get in touch with people quickly. This was before the Internet and E-mail. The articles I wrote for these publications and others like them became the core of my freelance business—at least until I got published in larger national magazines.