Q & A with National Geographic Traveler Editor-in-Chief Keith Bellows

Last fall, Travcoa and National Geographic Traveler sponsored the Next Great Travel Writer contest, sending the winner, Suzanne Roberts, to Mongolia and China on a Travcoa trip with Traveler Editor-in-Chief Keith Bellows to write on assignment for the Traveler website.

After returning from the trip in July, Keith Bellows took a few moments to fill us in on the trip and the field of travel writing.

You don’t normally travel in groups. You wrote that you normally travel incognito and alone. What was the experience of traveling with a group like?

[Group travel is] not the most comfortable way of travel for me simply because to be effective as a travel journalist, you really need to be able to insinuate yourself into a situation and a place without people being aware of it. You need to be free to totally go with flow, get lost, and be open to surprises. In a large measure, tours are organized so there are no surprises. You’re somewhat insulated from a lot of what is real around you.

I must say with this particular tour, because of the nature of the tour in Mongolia, it is what it is, so there was much less insularity. We really did get to have close contact with the locals, nomads, camel herders and so forth. My normal mode of action is to go to a place and observe it as you or anyone would.

Have you been to Mongolia before?

It was my first trip [to Mongolia]. I loved it. My major feeling was witnessing a country emerging from its cocoon- a place held in suspended animation. Quite frankly, until the early 90’s when the Russians left, it was pretty much closed to the world. Now it’s very much open. My major concern though was: I’m cruising across the steppes or Gobi Desert and there was nothing as far as the eye can see- how long will that last?

You said that you selected Suzanne’s essay on India as the winner because, “Her story instincts are good, and that is something you cannot teach a new writer.” Could you explain what you meant by that?

She wrote about the experience of witnessing a typical passing of an Indian life, which is through cremation. It was moving, well rendered in short form. She displayed good observational skills. When you’re looking at somebody as a writer, a lot of people can say they “went here, did that,” but it is very dull writing. I’m looking for someone who will set the scene, has an eye for detail, and can recognize something interesting when they see it.

What advice would you give aspiring travel writers?

First of all, I wouldn’t think of yourself as a travel writer. Before [National Geographic Traveler] magazine 10 years ago, I had never written any travel and certainly never edited any travel. Think of yourself as a writer first, a writer who travels.

Second: Write, write, write, write, write.

Third: Really read the writers you love and dissect them. Pull apart sentences and paragraph structure. Starting as writer, I looked at Sports Illustrated, and dissected it from the bottom up. How long are the sentences? How do they use verbs and adverbs? How do they start sentences? Transitions? How long are the paragraphs? How did they handle characters and dialogue?

How hard is it to blog and write while on the road? Do you find it significantly more difficult than writing from home?

I don’t think it’s so difficult to write well. I rewrite and pause. The problem with blogs on the road (and there were at least three times this happened on the trip) is that you make an observation on your “day one” post and then, on day three, you make another observation which you could have used to build on the first. On day seven, the observation could have been used to modify the observation from the days before.

Ultimately, the insight could lead to a conclusion and a summary perspective, but you don’t do that when you’re blogging. You just report what you see and do. Over time, that can be very boring, “What did I do with my summer vacation?” If you can get distance from something and render it with perspective and insight, it is worth reading. I think episodic blogging gives some opportunity to give people a sense for what is going on and a place. But a good writer should also be synthesizing and offering insight and perspective and that’s hard to do in a blog.

Is there anywhere you would like to go where you haven’t been yet?

Every place that I haven’t been to. I feel like I haven’t spent nearly enough time in Indonesia, Java, Sumatra, Papua New Guinea. I was born in Africa, but I have not spent a lot of time in Africa.

Check back tomorrow for an interview with Next Great Travel Writer contest winner Suzanne Roberts.