BootsnAll Travel Community

I have never written anything for public consumption. My whole life people have told me that I am a good writer and very creative, but I never took the compliments seriously. I keep an online journal and lots of people email me all the time telling me that I am a good writer and that they are moved by my writing and so forth. I want to keep a travel journal with the plan of adapting it into a travel essay. Any tips on this? I do not bring a camera with me when I travel because my whole trip will revolve around taking good pictures and not experiencing the culture. I am worried that a travel journal will do the same. Any tips on how to avoid this? Also, anyone ever adapted a travel journal into a travel essay? Like I said I have never written anything aspiring to get it published before so any help at all would be appreciated.

quote:

Originally posted by Slip:
Don't be a goof, take your camera.

Wiser words were never spoke!

and if you're afraid of the camera getting nicked, take a high quality disposable. i've always found them better than expected...
i'd agree with Slip about articles with photos. it just personalises something and makes it more attractive to read the writing. take the simple example of a cookbook... when i want to find a recipe in one of them, i flip through until i find a drool worthy pic of the dish. more often than not, i end up cooking that cause of how it looked in the photo.
as much as we wish writing stood on its own merit, a photo is always a selling point to the reader....

Just to pull this back to the original topic --

I think there are two potential approaches to keeping a journal with an eye toward eventual publication.

Approach #1 would be to plan out what you want to do in advance, go to the places that will fit the essay that you have in your head, and then take detailed notes every night on everything that you saw and did.

Approach #2 would be to just take your trip, take superdetailed notes every single night, and then hope that you've got enough raw material to turn into a travel essay.

The number one recommendation that I'd have would be to take notes on the actual conversations that you have, and the interesting things that people tell you. Being able to include real converstaions in your essay will make it come alive.