Rants & Observations

The Travel Writer's Handbook by Louise Purwin Zobel

A couple of years ago I decided I wanted to look into being a travel writer. Mary found me a course and I signed up for it. Soon I was receiving envelopes of material that I was supposed to study. My first three assignments were received less than favorably. The main reason being the person doing the evaluation not liking my writing my travel stories in the first person. Although I continued to read the material, I didn't turn in any more assignments. I decided after reading their material that I wanted to read other authors on writing travel stories as well as look into the award winning travel writing of previous years. This is the first book I found at the book store.

By interesting coincidence, Zobel's text is probably one of the primary textbooks for travel writing. For less than $20 I received all the information I paid almost $300 for in the course and it was probably better written. Of course I didn't get the personal reviews of my writing with Zobel's book but I really wasn't too impressed there anyway. My reading of the award winning travel writing revealed that about 75% of them were written in first person.

As of this point I still haven't had a sale of any of my travel writing but you have to get your line wet to catch fish (in other words, so far I haven't tried to sell anything to an actual publisher). As for Zobel's book, I keep it next to me when I'm writing , right there on the shelf next to Strunk and White, the AP Stylebook, and Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing. You should too.

posted by Paul @ 3:29 PM