MissAdventures

Five Films About Italy

I recently got the coolest invitation ever.

The editorial director of focusfeatures.com, distributor of the new George Clooney film The American, asked me to come up with a list of my five favorite Italy films. The result was Five in Focus: American Expat Bloggers on Italian Movies. I was one of six bloggers that was granted this fun opportunity to both relate my favorite films set in Italy and get a link back to my site Italofile.com.

Who would have ever thought that my labor of love, my little website on Italy travel, would get mentioned in the same breath as a George Clooney film? Well, I am thrilled and hope this is just the beginning of more fantastic opportunities and lucky breaks.

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The Hunkiest Men in Travel

Travel writing has always been considered one of the sexiest kinds of writing. Everyone wants to travel, everyone dreams of travel, and travel writers can make those vacation fantasies just pop off the page. So, it made sense when I saw today that the girls from Galavanting posted Galavanting Picks: The 2010 Hunkiest Men in Travel. Not only is travel writing a sexy profession, but it has some pretty good looking practitioners.

I agreed with the ladies’ picks for the most part. Anthony Bourdain? Yes! Robert Reid? Oooh la la…Then again, I felt that this article was really lacking. I mean, there are literally dozens of hard-working, travel-blogging hunks (I hate this word, but let’s go with it) who were overlooked for the likes of Matt Lauer and George Clooney’s character in Up in the Air, both of whom could appear on a list for just about anything.

Yes, I thought: it’s time for the unsung heroes of travel writing to earn some recognition beyond the written word. I could surely come up with a pretty good list on my own. But wouldn’t a crowd-sourced list be more democratic and more fun? Plus, this would be a great way to learn about the many travel writers that others enjoy reading (and lusting after).

So, I’m inviting you fine readers of this blog and my followers on twitter to leave a comment below, tweet (DM) me (@melanierenzulli or @italofileblog), or e-mail your picks for this follow-up list to the Hunkiest Men in Travel. I’ve even set up an anonymous “ask” page on Tumblr so you men can secretly nominate yourselves for this list.

Here are the rules for submissions:

1) Hunk must be a travel writer. He can write for a personal blog, a major travel blog (e.g., Gadling, Gridskipper, etc.), or simply be a pretty boy of print.

2) Provide said hunk’s website URL and/or link to travel writing clip.

3) Give a very brief explanation of why hunk should be on the list. Hunkiness is, of course, highly subjective.

I’m going to set a deadline of September 5, 2010, so I can compile the results for Labor Day week.

And, that’s it! I’m really looking forward to seeing what we all come up with!

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Everything You Need To Know About Blogging You Can Learn From Hip Hop

Time for a true confession: As a freelance writer, I have definitely been intrigued by the possibility of making money from blogging. In this day and age, who hasn’t? I’ve made a little money from Adsense ads, affiliate ads, and a few ad sales on my other website Italofile: The Italy Travel Resource. But it hasn’t been enough to quit the proverbial day job. Actually, as a stay-at-home-mom and sometimes trailing spouse of a diplomat, I can’t really quit the day job.

So, blogging it is!

But I didn’t start blogging to make money. When I started this blog – way back in 2004! – there wasn’t even the possibility of making money from a blog. Julie, of Julie and Julia fame, was live blogging during this time and there was only an inkling that a blog could be a money-maker, either from being turned into a book, from selling tons of ads, or by catapulting the blogger into the stratosphere of writing and consulting fame, a la Ana Marie Cox, formerly and famously of Wonkette.

I started this blog as a way of staying sharp, finding my voice, and, as was the case with Italofile, keeping up-to-date on travel news. My thinking was that these mounds and mounds of posts would be good for my daily writing exercises as well as be good writing samples for anyone who wants to hire me. Those are still my thoughts on the matter.

Six years into it (and four with Italofile), I have gotten a little antsy from time to time wondering when/if the money will come. There have even been times when I thought I should sign up for one of them there A-List Blogging Bootcamps. But the more I thought about it, I didn’t want to be part of a bootcamp. I wanted to be an individual. Find *my* voice.

Alas, given the chance to download a free e-book with A-List Blogging suggestions, I took it. I began reading the tips from Leo Babauta and co. and evaluating my sites against the advice. As I read more and more, it struck me that a lot of these practices, like writing guest pots, were obvious if not always easily implemented. Then I had a real revelation: I don’t have to go to bootcamp because….

Everything I Need to Know About Blogging I Can Learn From Hip Hop!

(Forget for a moment that I am neither an A-List Blogger nor Hip Hop Royalty, and bear with me…)

1. Content is King

How many times have you heard Jay-Z or Kanye West rap about how others’ lyrics are wack (excuse the lame expression)? Or consider how the most respected voices in hip hop have the sickest rhymes. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that Mos Def, who wrote the excellent, 500+word, aptly-named song Hip Hop, continues to be a viable and bankable star after all these years rather than DMX, that three-hit wonder who liked to growl crude and not very good lyrics. Compare “scrutinize my literature, from the large to the miniature” by Mos Def to “all I know is pain,
all I feel is rain” from DMX’s Ruff Ryders’ Anthem and you’ll know what I mean when I say content is the thing. In A-List Blogger speak: “there is no better marketing than writing great articles,” according to Jay White of DumbLittleMan.com.

2. Anyone Can Do It

On the A-List Blogging BootCamps website, Leo Babauta says, “Blogs have taken the power from traditional publishers, and given it to ordinary people, like you and me.” (emphasis mine) In Hip Hop terms, that reminds me of hundreds of hungry, determined young kids sending off demo tapes with their best stuff (or, maybe, posting songs to MySpace or similar). Blogging, like rapping, is a skill, yes. But, again, anyone can do it as long as they practice and get their stuff into the hands (or in front of the eyes or on the ears) of the right people (see #3). So if Ms. Mary J. Blige can rise from the projects of New York to become the Queen of Hip Hop Soul, then surely I can rise out of this basement office near Washington, DC, to become a top blogger. Right? Right.

3. Guest Stars

Who doesn’t love a star turn by Jay-Z on a Beyoncé or Rihanna number? Or a Lil Wayne rhyme on…just about everything? If Lil Wayne was a blogger, he’d probably have blogged for ZenHabits.net and ProBlogger.net by now. This guy – all right, call him “Weezy” but I think that nickname is annoying – has made a living of guest starring on other stars’ songs. According to Wikipedia (the blogger’s favorite news source):

Despite no album release for two years, Lil Wayne appeared in numerous singles as a featured performer, including “Gimme That” by Chris Brown, “Make It Rain” by Fat Joe, “You” by Lloyd, and “We Takin’ Over” by DJ Khaled (also featuring Akon, T.I., Rick Ross, Fat Joe, and Birdman), “Duffle Bag Boy” by Playaz Circle, “Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill)” by Wyclef Jean (also featuring Akon), and the remix to “I’m So Hood” by DJ Khaled (also featuring T-Pain, Young Jeezy, Ludacris, Busta Rhymes, Big Boi, Fat Joe, Birdman, and Rick Ross). All these singles charted within the top 20 spots on the Billboard Hot 100, Hot Rap Tracks, and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts. On Birdman’s 2007 album 5 * Stunna, Lil Wayne appeared on the singles “100 Million” and “I Run This” among several other tracks. Wayne also appeared on tracks from albums Getback by Little Brother, American Gangster by Jay-Z, and Graduation by Kanye West and Insomniac by Enrique Iglesias. “Make it Rain”, a Scott Storch production that peaked at number 13 on the Hot 100 and number two on the Hot Rap Tracks chart, was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for 2008.

So, it’s almost like Weezy didn’t even update his own blog for two years but was still getting some serious cred thanks to guest posting, er, rapping. But, when he did finally release an album in 2008, it sold more than 1 million copies in 1 week. Sure, it’s hard to compare the blogosphere with the music industry – and who’d want to in this crazy economic climate? – but this anecdote does tell you something: guest posting (starring) pays off. You’ll reach a much wider audience in the long run.

4. Self Promote, Self Promote

For bloggers, self-promotion has become much easier thanks to Facebook and Twitter. Of course, there’s the tried and true way of guest posting, too. But I also think this is hard advice to follow for some of us writers. We write because it’s easier for us to say things on paper or on screen than it is face-t0-face. Overcoming this timidity by promoting our stuff is a challenge.

This is where we need to summon the shameless self-promotion powers of Jay-Z.

From the beginning, Mr. Z (I know, Mr. Carter) has never doubted his rapping abilities. In one of his most recent – and most infectious – hits Empire State of Mind, Jay raps, “I’m the new Sinatra, And since I made it here, I can make it anywhere, (Yeah they love me everywhere).” In Beyoncé’s Crazy in Love, Jay-Z even self-promotes on his guest rap, alluding to his nickname HOVA (the s0-called God (Jehovah – Jay-HOVA) of rap), which is also mentioned in countless other hits from him.

You know, Jay-Z pulls a #3 and a #4 for Crazy in Love and got a wife out of it, too. His way must be the right way. So, don’t fear a little self-promotion. Because if you don’t do it for yourself, who will?

5. Promote Your Other Ventures

This point is related to #4, but I thought it was worth giving it its own header. Did you just finish a book? Do you have another blog that you want to publicize? Are you getting some cool writing gigs? This is a no-brainer, but make sure you promote these seemingly separate ventures on your own, primary blog. I admit, I don’t do this as much as I should (time escapes me). But this is a sure-fire way for people to know about your other projects and for your other projects to get looked at. If you’re not convinced, don’t ask me. Ask Jay-Z again. How many times have you heard him drop Roc-A-Fella, his record label, into his lyrics? Like 1,000 times at least…

A reminder: you can also find me at Italofile.com and usatourismboard.com. Respective Twitter accounts are @Italofileblog and @usatourismboard. And, don’t forget Facebook – Italofile on Facebook, USATB on Facebook. Oh, and did I mention that I’ve been experimenting with a new photo blog called Che Bella!, too?

6. Shout Outs

My last reason for paying attention to hip hop for blogging advice is all about spreading the love. Hip Hop stars do it all the time – at awards shows, in song lyrics. “First off, I have to give a shout out to my boys…”

Everyone loves to be admired and recognized by their peers. In blogging, a shout-out is simply link love – linking to a site or sites that you admire so that that blogger can get credit where it’s due. Organic links – ones that come from “real” blogs – are what make the blog SEO world go ’round. So shout-outs are as good to give as they are to get.

Of course, if you’re linking to a site and dissing it at the same time, you may want to try adding a “nofollow” attribute.

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There are probably tons of other ways I can compare the A-List Blogging and Hip Hop Handbooks. Can you think of any? I don’t even want to get into rap rivalries. Though I’m thinking that the blog world equivalent may be flame comments. Ha! That could be a fun future post.

At any rate, I’m just going to keep plugging away like Julie and Ana Marie and Leo and maybe – just maybe – something good or GREAT will come along. After all:

80% of success is just showing up – Woody Allen

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28 Things I Learned At TBEX

This past weekend, I was fortunate enough to attend TBEX, a meet-up of travel bloggers organized by Travel Blog Exchange and, in particular, Kim Mance of Galavanting. For those of you who attended and may have met me, I was under the guise of Italofile, my blog about Italy travel (@italofileblog on Twitter), and also as USA Tourism Board (@usatourismboard), an unofficial guide to USA travel that I’ve been playing around with over the last year (to little success *sigh*).

At any rate, the TBEX conference was incredibly useful for knowledge gathering, networking, and enjoying a few Gin and Tonics on a lovely, if sticky, June evening in New York City. Here’s a list of what I learned, some professional, as well as personal, revelations. I’d love to hear what you learned, too, so leave a comment below.

Things I Learned At TBEX

1. Travel bloggers and travel writers are the same. We have (or should have) editorial calendars, self-imposed deadlines, and an inherent drive to learn more about the world around us.

2. My travel writing heroes are real and they are fabulous. Pictured are Jim Benning, Mike Barish, David Farley, and Robert Reid. Not pictured, but also in my pantheon are Johnny Jet, Spud Hilton, Chris Gray Faust, Sean Keener, and many many others.

3. Your own travel photos are better than photos you’ve “borrowed” from Flickr, according to Gary Arndt of Everything Everywhere. (See horribly grainy photo in link #2 – but, hey, it’s mine!)

4. Travel writers like to drink.

5. Some travel writers like to drink $300 glasses of scotch. Don’t do that if you’re on a press trip and liquor is comped. Bad form.

6. If you go on a press trip or get PR stuff in the mail and you’re going to write about it, disclose it. Every time.

7. Both PR people and travel writers should do research on each other to make sure that their relationships make sense.

8. If you want to increase your SEO, make sure you add titles, alt tags, and descriptions to your posts and especially any photos or videos that you use because the latter have less of the “market share” on search engines.

9. Knew this, but it was reiterated at TBEX: Google’s Adwords Keywords is invaluable for SEO.

10. You can SEO your site to death, but if the content is no good no one is going to care. Write for humans, damnit!

11. It’s not enough to have a laptop and an iPhone. Travel bloggers use all kinds of cool tools like the Quick Pod handheld tripod for shooting video or taking photos of yourself, the wireless mini battery extender for iPhone, and Pano, an app for taking outstanding photos on the iPhone (as long as the light is right).

12. My next computer should be a Mac or an iPad. Really jealous of the three TBEXers who won the iPad drawings from TripAdvisor.com.

13. The people who work at TripAdvisor.com are pretty nice and know how to throw an awesome happy hour (see #4).

14. I should get to Australia – and particularly the Northern Territory – immediately. I was mesmerized by Mike Barish‘s talk about it during lunch on Saturday. Wow.

15. If I could write about travel the way Mike Barish casually talks about travel, I’d be eternally grateful to the universe and perhaps much wealthier than I am today. But then….

16. Overheard at TBEX: “Travel writers have been starving artists for an eternity. Travel blogging’s not going to change that. Much.” Or…something like that.

17. I’m not the only travel blogger with kids. LOTS of mommy travel bloggers were at TBEX including Ciao Bambino and Luxury Travel Mom. The work that these ladies do is amazing and makes me realize that I need to stop bitching about having no time to write. (That said, ladies, are your kids in school, have a nanny, etc.? Or are you parenting and writing at the same time, all the time?)

18. Having a son with autism also should not hamper my ability to be a kick ass travel writer, as evidenced, once again, by TBEX organizer and galavanter Kim Mance.

19. Two days to attend TBEX was both too much and too little time to spend away from my kids.

20. Some travel bloggers look just like their Twitter avatars, in particular @italylogue and @journeywoman. It was so great meeting Jessica and Evelyn.

21. Journey Woman, aka Evelyn Hannon, is a pioneer of women’s travel, having started in 1982. And don’t ask her to change her website: it’s comfortable, like your grandmother’s house.

22. Finding your niche is important. More important is sticking with it, getting better with each post.

23. If you’ve excelled at your niche, create and sell an e-book about it, a la Nomadic Matt. It’s a way to monetize your blog without having to fill it with ads.

24. Invest in your blog by, for example, purchasing a theme. (Something I learned from Nomadic Matt’s eBook How to Make Money with Your Travel Blog. (See…#23 works!)

25. The extremely prolific travel writer Zach Everson doesn’t seem to have a geographic specialty, rather his niche is humor, a trait that works for a ton of markets. To wit, this tweet on ethical blogging and this one about shooting travel video and this tweet on traveling within the U.S. Was cracking up the whole time. Wish I had such a gift.

26. Speaking of gifts, An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church’s Strangest Relic in Italy’s Oddest Town by David Farley comes out in paperback on July 6, 2010. Who doesn’t want to read about the search to find Jesus’s foreskin? Yeah, thought so.

27. Pam Mendel, of Nerd’s Eye View, is incredibly funny (knew that, TBEX cemented it) and quite the activist for travel writers. I love the way she used her guest spot on a conference panel to demand Free WiFi in hotels. It really is just as important as the lighting and indoor plumbing.

28. Try to keep the emotion out of travel writing. Look at your work objectively and don’t beat yourself up thinking that every one else but you has got it figured out. As Sean Keener so nicely put it in this tweet:

It’s not about keeping up. It’s about finding your voice and your “why”

Thanks everyone for a great weekend! I sincerely hope I can make it out to Vancouver for TBEX 2011.

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Freelance Travel Writing and the Art of Being a Parent

I recently turned down a press trip to a place I’ve always wanted to go. The press trip was going to be an all-expenses paid trip to a destination near the Mediterranean Sea. I would go, see the sites, and write about the destination for a few publications. I didn’t have a firm assignment for any magazine, newspaper, or website, so this presser was going to be more a frivolous pursuit than a full-fledged moneymaker.

So, why did I turn this opportunity down? Ethics? No. I discussed that in an earlier post. I turned down a fabulous press trip opportunity because I couldn’t bear the thought of traveling without my children.

To those without kids (and some with), this probably sounds like a pathetic excuse. I think back to Eat, Pray, Love, in which Elizabeth Gilbert confessed

I have always felt, ever since I was sixteen years old and first went to Russia with my saved-up babysitting money, that to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby – I just don’t care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it’s mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to – I just don’t care.

Gilbert compared her love of travel to the love of a parent for a child. And, while I once had the very same feelings about travel – that it was what made me me – it was before I had children. It is not the same. (I am saying this at the end of a week being snowed-in with two bored children under four. So it must be love.)

The thought of traveling thousands of miles away while my children stay behind is a frightening proposition for me, not in the least because I have only spent one night away from either of them only once in the three and a half years since becoming a mother. While I know that the kids would be fine in the care of their father and/or grandparents, I can’t help but envision the sense of abandonment they would feel while I was away. No doubt, if I took the trip, the thought of my children missing me would put a pit in my stomach from the moment I walked through the airport security gates and would haunt me throughout the entire journey.

And then I start thinking about “what if something happened to me?” I’d never forgive myself. I imagine my husband explaining to my children, “You will never see your mother again because she had to go on an unnecessary press trip.”

Now, you must be thinking, “You’re a wuss!” There are plenty of mothers who must travel for work and they – and their children – do just fine. In fact, my husband is set to go on a two-week business trip next month and I don’t think the idea of leaving his family has even phased him. Maybe it’s like that for fathers and some mothers – “It’s work. It must be done. I have no choice.”

But I wasn’t planning to go on a business trip to Cleveland to talk about business forecasts. I was going to be traveling in a foreign country, over-indulging in the local food, seeing gorgeous, historic sites, practically going on vacation. I was going to be working, yes. But I was also going to be having fun.

This, of course, presents an existential crisis for me. Can I call myself a travel writer if I don’t want to travel?

It’s not that I don’t travel anymore. In fact, my husband’s job as a diplomat guarantees that I will be traveling overseas again – with kids – in the near future. In our last post, Turkey, we traveled all over the place with our sons in car trips to the Mediterranean and Black Seas, on overnight train rides to Istanbul, on day trips to villages near Istanbul. Traveling with kids was trying, but we we couldn’t think of leaving them at home with the nanny like so many others did. I also did a few trips alone with my oldest son (before the youngest was born) back to the States which was a serious hassle, what with airport security, overweight carry-on baggage, and all the fatigue that goes along with keeping a toddler engaged on a plane and in airports. When we returned to the States for good last summer, I vowed that I wouldn’t get on a plane again until I absolutely had to. Friends and family could come to us for a change.

Almost all of the travel writing I’ve ever read, save for maybe Paul Theroux or V.S. Naipaul, mythologizes the way of life in foreign countries. People in countries outside of our own have their priorities straight. They have honest, unhurried meals. They take walks after dinner with their loved ones. They live with less but enjoy life more. They take time for family. All of those traits that we as travel writers admire about residents in foreign lands are not at all beyond our grasp. In other words, we can talk the talk but we rarely walk the walk.

So, call me a heretic for breaking the freelance travel writing creed. Call me crazy for not accepting a free trip to Mediterranean bliss. Call me an embarrassment to feminists everywhere. Call me whatever you want because you won’t be calling me a bad (or absent) parent. There will be more chances to travel later. And I am sure that I will eventually travel abroad without my kids. But right now, I’m going to enjoy to enjoy this time. Besides it’s time to put my youngest down for a nap.

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The Little Train That Could

Here’s the link to my latest travel article on National Geographic’s Intelligent Travel Blog. This was my first piece for them, and I’m really pleased with how it turned out.

This piece is about the Toy Train in Matheran, a hill station outside of Mumbai. India has submitted the toy train, which made its first run in 1907 during the British Raj era, to UNESCO for consideration as a World Heritage Site.

What was nice about writing this piece is that I mined two different areas to come up with my pitch. Using the power of Twitter, I had just happened to save a search column on Mumbai. One evening when I was looking at that column’s most recent tweets, I saw the headline about UNESCO officials in Matheran. I visited Matheran in 2004 and wrote about it on this blog. I used that blog post to jog my memory about the place, did a little research, and voilà! – a new clip!

The Little Train That Could…Be a World Heritage Site

Photo © Himanshu Sarpotdar

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Of Freelance Writers and Junkets

There was a debate about travel writing ethics today on Twitter (#twethics), which started with a story on Gawker called “New York Times Travel Writer Broke These Travel Writer Rules With Junket.” Gawker ran the above photo of Mike Albo, said travel writer who was accused of engaging in a “swag orgy” because he accepted (from JetBlue) a paid trip to Jamaica. First of all, I don’t know about you, but that guy doesn’t look like he has been privy to any kind of orgy. This guy doesn’t even have time to shave, much less be involved in an orgy, swag or otherwise! Though, interestingly enough, this photo was taken by one Irina Slutsky. Bad joke…I know.

Anyhow, Gawker and numerous people on Twitter were appalled that a travel writer – for the New York Times, no less! – would go on a junket. Also known as a press trip or a “fam” (short for familiarization trip), a junket enables a writer to get third-party funding for a trip to where the news is occurring. The New York Times writer guidelines and the guidelines of many other fine newspapers and magazines forbid freelance writers from taking paid trips. I am quite familiar with the NYT guidelines, as I’ve sent in numerous – rejected – queries on which I had to state at the top of the page the date when the trip was taken. I suppose there’s some fact-checker in-house who looks to see if any trips coincide with any known press trips.

I certainly understand why the “no free travel” guidelines are in place. But, as one Twitter user chimed in “no press trips means #travelwriters have to pay to go to work.” (@tjohansmeyer).

I have been travel writing for more than 10 years. I have taken some press trips – most of them early on in my career – and I have written about travel while paying my way and/or living “on location.” I think there are advantages to both.

Press trips, which are usually sponsored by tourism and visitors boards, hotels, or tour companies (or a combination of those), can be very helpful to a writer. They help us get in, get what we need to know, and get out. Indeed, the trips can be a whirlwind, with CVBs whisking you around to only the places they want you to see. But travel writers have hearts, minds, stomachs, eyes, and curiosities that enable them to see past the fluff and swag.

As far as getting in and getting out, that’s important. While on a press trip, most travel writers are thinking of how they can sell this particular experience 2, 4, or 10 times using different angles and pitching to different markets. So, while we may have an assignment to write for “X” magazine, we also want to try to spin the story to write for A, B, and C magazines, too. So, could it be possible that Mike Albo was on a junket in Jamaica for an assignment for, say, High Times Magazine, but found something that would have been of interest to the New York Times while he was there? I think that a majority of travel writers spend more time writing (and querying and marketing) than they do actually traveling. And that’s because it is so expensive. Subsidization is often the only way for it to make any sense.

You can also have a bit of a Catch-22 when it comes to press trips and assignments. Many publications won’t allow you to accept free travel. But then, many press trip providers won’t invite you on a trip unless you have an assignment.

On the other side of the coin is writing while you’re already living in the location. “Go where the locals go!” is what many travel publications beckon us to do. But maybe the locals don’t know as much as we think they do. For example, I lived in Mumbai for two years. Someone recently posed me a question of a good, mid-priced hotel in that city and I drew a blank. I knew the Taj and the Oberoi, but what did I know about the other hotels? I had no reason to spend a night in one of the rooms. Had I been asked to research the hotels, I would not have paid to stay the night to figure out the quirks of each hotel room. And, yes, it takes staying in a place overnight to figure out if the bed is lumpy or whether room service is any good. Locals may also not be as attuned to the tourist sites, either. For example, my husband, who grew up in New York the son of immigrants, has never been to the Statue of Liberty. Some local knowledge, huh?

Publications like NYT do not approve of press trips, nor do they pay for writers’ expenses so that they can travel. But, could you imagine if David Pogue, the Times’ chief tech writer, had to pay – out of his own pocket – all of the gadgets that he reviews? Perhaps travel just isn’t important enough to merit its own budget?

At any rate, I’m going to keep TRYING to write about travel because I like exploring and telling people about new places. Luckily, I can use my many web outlets to do just that. Because it’s not only readers that are leaving newspapers and magazines to die at the hands of blogs; writers are conducting their own boycott, too.

By the way, if *you* want to pay my way to travel, the Miss Adventures writer guidelines say it’s okay!

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Paul Theroux On How He Became a Travel Writer

Paul Theroux may be a curmudgeon, but he’s a damn good travel writer (if that’s what you must call him). This piece in the Guardian about how and why Theroux became a travel writer comes a few days shy of the release of his books The Great Railway Bazaar and The Old Patagonian Express as Penguin Modern Classics.

I couldn’t agree with Theroux more on this point:

The travel book was a bore. It annoyed me that a traveller hid his or her moments of desperation or fear or lust. Or the time he or she screamed at the taxi driver, or mocked the folk dancers. And what did they eat, what books did they read to kill time, and what were the toilets like? I had done enough travelling to know that half of travel was delay or nuisance – buses breaking down, hotel clerks being rude, market peddlers being rapacious. The truth of travel was interesting and off-key, and few people ever wrote about it.

I can hardly stand reading a long-form travel writing feature (unless it’s in Outside Magazine), even though that’s the line of work I’m in. It’s an inconvenient truth. And, yet, the guidebook writing business is one that leaves little opportunity to report on the distasteful aspects of travel. As guidebooks must take on a certain form – where to go, what to do, where to eat, etc. – there’s little room to list the negatives. And so you cull the best from what you have experienced.

I think that blogs offer the critical travel writer a great forum for expressing the more personal aspects of trips. Perhaps, some day, I will have the chance to write a book about what I really think about Italy, Turkey, India, etc. Stay tuned!

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Not India, but Italy

Good news, everyone! As you may or may not know, in between voiceovers, observing India, and blogging, I’ve also maintained a pretty full freelance writing/editing schedule. The results of those long days and nights last fall have been two guidebooks on Italy that I am quite proud of.
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What’s Up, BnA?

Lots of web troubles going on as of late. Looks like BootsnAll, the site through which I have my blog, decided to do some upgrades. And, as a result, my blog no longer has formatting.

Talked to a guy at support, and he said the site looks the same to him. Am I the only one seeing a completely different look in my browser?

Anyway, I can’t concentrate on writing until the technical kinks get fixed. I could tinker with the templates myself, but I’m a little short of time these days: Yoga and Hindi classes this week.

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