Breaking Into Travel Writing

Travel writers are adventurers. Swashbuckling storytellers who immerse themselves in exotic settings, recording their experiences with aggressive sensory detail—the smell of a Moroccan spice market, the feel of an Antarctic wind gust—to transport readers to a different place.

That’s the romanticized version, anyway.

And for a few lucky, talented folks that’s the reality. (See: Paul Theroux, Susan Orlean, Bill Bryson, etc.) For most of us blue-collar travel scribes, however, the day to day is a lot less glamorous. Few publications pay for trips nowadays, and most venues have little interest in your personal adventures.

Even so, I’d contend that travel writing is still one of the most robust, opportunity-laden genres of journalism today. At least that’s been my experience over the past decade, in, , , and others.