A sneak preview of my Tim Cahill interview

After three years of monthly interviews with travel writers at RolfPotts.com, I was finally able to track down a longtime favorite of mine, Tim Cahill. I will feature an interview with him on the site in January, but -- in the spirit of the holidays -- I wanted to give Vagablogging readers a sneak preview, which can be found in its entirety here.

Without a doubt, Tim provided me with my funniest interview yet. "I wanted to be a writer from my early teenage years," he says, "but I never told anyone. Writers, in my opinion, were god-like creatures, and to say I was striving to be a writer would be incredibly arrogant. So I kept my ambition a secret, like masturbation."

Cahill goes on to tell of his early forays into writing, his involvement with Rolling Stone magazine, his founding of Outside magazine, and the challenges of reporting from remote places. His advice to aspiring travel writers is as follows:

1. This is not a way to make a lot of money.

2. The travel is difficult on your relationships with loved ones, unless they are coming along with you, which may not be possible. (see #1 above.)

3. If you are not in it for the money, it is -- in my opinion -- the best job in American journalism.

4. Editors, for the most part, don’t care “what” you’ve done, or how astounding the physical event may have been. You need to write well. Many others are capable of doing what you have done (probably), so you must write better than they.

5. You become a better writer by writing. You become a better travel writer by writing about travel.

6. Publishing your work is important. Even if you are giving a piece to some smaller publication for free, you will learn something about your writing. The editor will say something, friends will mention it. You will learn.

7. If this is your dream, don’t give up. It takes a while to work your way up to travel features in magazines. Also, first books aren’t always sufficiently appreciated. Almost any writer can tell you that. It goes like this: “I’m not sure I’m a lot better than I was 20 years ago, when all I got were rejection slips. Now it seems they’ll publish anything I write.” It takes time.

Click here for full interview.