Dreaming of being a Travel Writer

I have always had what my Mom referred to as 'wanderlust', an insatiable desire to see basically everywhere.  A quick look at my Pinterest boards and you will see the many locations listed on my “Places I want to see” board and even more incredible pins on the “places I have been” board.  Travelling is such an incredible opportunity to take a very large world and make it small.  The more places we see, the more we understand others and the more we see that it is our similarities that bind us, not our differences. 

I am proud to boast that I have travelled to thirty-five states in my adult life (and by this I do not include things like layovers at an airport, but actually driving into or through that state).  Being able to see those last 15 states is a big goal of mine.  I can also boast that I have travelled to 14 different countries outside of the United States, but to be fair a few of those countries are pretty tiny (Vatican City, San Marino, Monaco, and Lichtenstein). 

In all of my travels, I have basked in the sights, smells and tastes of each of these unique places.  It does seem like I would be a good fit for doing travel writing, but it is not as easy as it seems.  I have begun to do a little research and so far I am on the right track. 

Some of the best advice for travel writing that I have found can be summarized into just a few main points;

·         Travel a lot – and document (blog or whatever works for you) all of the rich experiences of your travels

·         Find your unique niche in the travel market – there are tons of folks who would love to go to exotic places and sip tropical drinks for a living, so what makes you stand out from the crowd

·         Write your articles and make sure you write them very well; be clear in your purpose.

·         Network, both online and offline to get your story published

Spending just a few minutes researching online – it is obvious there are a ton of publication choices out there related to travel.  We have all heard of some of them; Conde Nast, Travel & Leisure, and of course the holy grail of travel magazines – National Geographic, which has a new National Geographic Traveler edition, but there are so many online choices today.  To find out submission guidelines you will need to scroll to the very bottom of their website and most often click on ‘contact us’ or a similarly titled button. 

You may get rejected, most likely you will get rejected several times, but if you love to travel as much as I do – it’s worth trying, that way you can hopefully join me on a beautiful beach somewhere, with a tropical drink in your hand and we can both be paid to write about our incredible travel experiences.