Good advice for writing about your travels
“The well-worn adage to “write what you know” remains true, at least in the sense of knowing what interests you. When neophytes travel, they have this idea that they must write something very broad, describing every aspect of a place like Paris or Bangkok or Canyonlands. Far more interesting would be a piece about the men or women who collect the bits of tile used to cover certain Thai temples, or the story of how Brancusi’s beautiful sculpting studio ended up outside the Pompidou Center. If you’re a firefighter, write a story about the firefighters of Paris, and how quirky and unusual it is to fight fires in Paris. When was the first major fire in Paris? People should write about what fascinates them, rather than try to do a general story that covers all the bases.”
–Jeff Greenwald, in Michael Shapiro’s A Sense of Place (2004)
November 18th, 2005 at 4:40 pm
Not only does following this advice create writing that is more enjoyable for your friends back home, but it means that later on when you read back to what you wrote, you have your own personal sense of what it was like being there. It helps you safekeep your memories of the combination of a certain place, people and time – most of which are totally unrepeatable experiences. I’m not a professional travel writer. Most of the things I’ve written are unfit for public consumption. I’ve travelled quite a lot, usually solo. The largest problem with this is that I have a terrible memory. Voyages that I have no written record of have gone into the mists of time. I can barely remember anything anymore – people’s names, where my keys are, what I’m supposed to do today. So if I look back at some of my writings it’s comforting to think that I can recall with this alarming clarity what it felt like being in a place that was so much more infinitely memorable and unexpected than that of my mundane exsistence here in the States (which, granted, is still pretty f’ing cool when I compare it with some of the folks I met travelling who work 7 days a week at miserable hotel jobs and still remain quite chipper…but that’s another story!)