Experience the Real World

Writing is a reflection of life. If you write non-fiction, it’s a documentation and interpretation of life. And if you choose to write fiction, you convert what happens in real life into fictional drama. The important thing is not to just sit in front of your computer and forget about life.  Get out and live it.

You learned to write in school. However, the academic environment of school isn’t real life. And though you studied past writers in the form of literature, you never learned about their techniques, only their ideas. In fact, too many academicians infer too much from the works of famous writers. They inject symbolism and innuendo into everyone’s work, because they can’t see into the mind of these writers at the moment of creation.

Ernest Hemingway is most noted for his adventures in the real world. He was to some extent an eccentric, but he knew that if he didn’t try all sorts of things, he wouldn’t be able to write honestly about any of them. The old saying, “Write what you know,” is key to this way of thinking.

But in school, you didn’t write what you know. When you had to write a research paper, you searched out the facts and spit them out on paper in perhaps a slightly different form. You never took the time to digest them. After all, the only reader who mattered in this process was your teacher. Only his or her opinion counted. But in real life that’s not how it works.

A good writer writes from experience. And while you may not be able to afford the time or money to experience everything in life, you do experience a lot each day. Much of it you take for granted.

You don’t have to go to some exotic locale to gain insight. If you’re like most people, you struggle with relationships day in and day out. You know how you relate to people and how they relate to you. With some acute observation, you can study the relationship of others. Everyone knows about relationships. They just take them for granted and seldom look at them as material to write about.

You probably also take a vacation once in a while. Some people go to the beach and just lie in the sun. But you can see the beach and all who are on it as one giant resource to draw on. While lying there, try playing the “What If” game. Look at the group of people nearest you and see what you can gain from observing them throughout the day. Tune in to their conversation. Do they give you any ideas that you can work into a story?

Or perhaps you prefer to go on an historic vacation, visiting historic sites nearby or far away. What are you learning about these places and the people who inhabited them? One writer visited Fort Delaware, a former POW camp for Confederate soldiers. The fort has been lovingly restored by a group of dedicated volunteers and the State of Delaware. Recently, they reconstructed one of the prisoners’ barracks which reveals the lives of the 12,000 prisoners who were incarcerated there for the duration of the war. He learned a lot about their experiences. So much so, that he was able to create an article that truly captures the POW experience at the time. Being able to sit on one of the bunks in the barracks and seeing re-enactors portraying the roles of various prisoners put him right back in the war. And the knowledge he gained on that visit help put his readers there, too.

But writing isn’t limited to pleasurable things. How about documenting a tragedy. With all the news available to you, you should be able to glean a wealth of information to use later in a short story or novel. Because the media goes into overkill on most tragedies or disasters, you won’t be able to use any of the information right away. But you can put aside what you’ve learned for a writing project in the near future. 

To experience life, you don’t have to go zipping through the cloud forest on a zip line or get in the ring with a ferocious bull. Instead, look to experience those things in life that interest you. Then you’ll really be able to write what you know.

On the Road Again

Have you dreamed of traveling around the world then writing about your travels and getting paid for it? A lot of beginning writers and lots of other people have done just that. There’s something glamorous about travel writing. You’ll definitely impress your friends when you tell them you’re off to another far-off land. For them, travel comes maybe once or twice a year during vacation time. But to travel whenever it beckons you is to them a dream come true. But is it that easy?

True there’s a touch of glamor surrounding world-journeys-for-pay. Getting started in it isn't all that difficult if you hustle enough, but since 9/11 things have changed, not only because of what happened on that fateful day, but also because the publishing markets have changed.

Fifteen to twenty years ago, most readers got their information about other places from reading articles in magazines and travel guides. Since then the market has drastically shifted to include videos, podcasts, and hundreds if not thousands of Web sites with information on where to go and what to do. So the market for travel articles isn’t what it used to be.

Secondly, for the most part, you’ll make more if you work for minimum wage at McDonald’s than if you traveled the world and wrote travel articles. Have you seen what it costs to travel today? Compare those travel costs with what editors normally pay for travel pieces. No, I don’t mean the ones in Travel and Leisure and National Geographic Traveler. I’m talking about the majority of travel markets. The pay is pitiful for the amount of time and energy involved.

But still many writers try to break into this field. That’s because it seems to easy to everyone. Retired doctors who have the bucks to travel think they can dabble in travel writing. Retired teachers, who have the time and some bucks want to do the same. But how would they feel if you, the writer, wanted to dabble in medicine or teaching. You might be able to do the latter, but certainly not the former. To say the field is overcrowded is an understatement.

If you want to succeed in travel writing—and not just dabble in it—you have to work hard and be extremely organized. Remember, every moment you spend traveling is time spent, time for which you need to get paid.

Today, you pretty much have to have the means to travel to do travel writing full-time—or a spouse who will pay the bills while you travel and write about it. It used to be that airlines, hotels, and the like gave writers discounts or free transportation or accommodation. That isn’t so true anymore. Many hotels still give discounts and free rooms, but you have to get there, and the cost of doing that could hit you out of the ballpark. It doesn’t make sense to spend a $1,000 on a trip, only to make $200 on the article that results from it. So that means you’ll need to write and publish five $200 articles from that same trip to make up for the cost. And in reality, you probably won’t get paid $200 for each article, but less, which means you’ll have to publish a whole bunch of articles to make that trip pay for itself—and that doesn’t include any profit.

If you’re serious about travel writing, there are some things to do before you start packing. Discuss your travel plans with several editors—in person, by phone, or by email—regarding  places you'll be visiting, people you'd consider interviewing, and so forth. Often one or more of them will give you a noncommittal letter of introduction from them. This letter doesn't actually commit them to publishing any of your writing, but it helps open some doors, especially in foreign countries. At the least it should help establish that you are a working writer looking for good material. If you cannot get such a letter—and as a beginner that’s nearly impossible—then  take with you some backup material such as copies of your articles to present when strangers ask who you are and why you're asking all those questions.

Once you get established as a travel writer, you may, with luck, get a letter of assignment from an editor. This is the only way you’ll get any help with costs from hotels and such. Editors won’t hesitate to give one of their regular writers one of these, but they usually don’t give them to writers they don’t know.  Letters of assignment can get you out of tight situations when traveling, but more so they can get you into many museums and private libraries for your research and perhaps get you private tours with curators.

NEXT WEEK: More on travel writing.

Can Your Words Change the World?

Many writers don’t realize how their words can change the world. While the average writer may never know the effect of his or her articles, books, or stories, just about all affect their readers in some small way.

As a writer, it’s one job to enhance knowledge and ultimately change the world in which you live and work by publishing a meaningful article on a controversial new topic or by writing a short story or novel that illuminates human frailties. It’s another to affect change.

Early in my career, I wrote an article in a travel trade magazine about Apple Vacations, a travel wholesaler that has since grown by leaps and bounds. A group of people had taken a charter flight with another travel company, which while they were on vacation in the Bahamas, suddenly closed its doors and disconnected its phones, stranding this large group of vacationers. Someone in the office of the travel agent who had booked the charter read my article about Apple Vacations and immediately called them. The representative on the phone connected her to the president of the company who immediately sent one of Apple’s own charter planes to the Bahamas to retrieve the stranded passengers. The travel agency was so overjoyed about the rescue that it switched all of its vacation charter business to Apple Vacations. And I also got a call from Apple’s president thanking me for writing such a good article.

An antique dealer read another of my articles, this one about Parian ware, a less expensive look-alike to marble, and was able to identify a piece in his shop that he had drastically underpriced The information in my article allowed him to make a tidy profit on the piece when he sold it.

The first time your writing affects your reader in a visible way—providing you find out about it—the romance of freelance writing will become clear. When you incorporate the reality of this romance into every thing you write, you’ll begin to realize how rewarding a freelance writing career can be.

But keeping your ego under control is just as important, for success is often fleeting. You may bask in the glow of it for a few minutes, hours, or days, then it’s gone and you have to begin the process once more.

For many writers, the best rewards aren’t monetary, but the satisfaction that perhaps they’ve changed their readers lives for the better.