Travel writers: You need what Book Passage offers

by Pam Mandel on

The Book Passage Travel and Food Writers Conference had its 20th anniversary in August of this year. It was small, there were approximately 75 students. The conference is made of the usual stuff — formal talks by travel writers and classes taught by food bloggers and panel discussions about social media and breakfasts made blurry by staying up too late the night before. Book Passage is expensive, inconveniently located, and doesn’t include the cost of staying overnight at the limited hotel options nearby. And Book Passage can, I believe, make a very big difference in your trajectory as a travel writer, making it worth every dime. It was probably the most exciting, meaningful conference I’ve had the good fortune to attend.

A disclaimer and some context, first. This year was my first year at Book Passage. A travel writer friend, Jen Leo, had been badgering me for years to attend. (Jen is one of the regular voices on This Week in Travel, she launched the LA Times travel blog, and she edited Sand in my Bra, a travel compilation.) “YOU need to go,” Jen told me, “Promise me you will save all your ad money from this year to attend.” Then, shortly after TBEX (the Travelblog Exchange, a bloggers conference) in Vancouver, Don George offered me a faculty spot teaching a course on travel blogging. (Don contributes here at Gadling, but he’s also the author of Lonely Planet Travel Writing (How To), a contributor to National Geographic Traveler, and one of the founders of Book Passage.)I accepted and attended my first Book Passage as faculty. This means I didn’t pay the conference fee and that some of my expenses were covered. That said, let me assure you, I wasn’t there for the money. I was there to teach, to participate in panel conversations about social media, and to find out what all the fuss was about. By the end of the weekend I was equal parts delighted and really angry with myself for putting it off for so long. I was wildly honored to be there as a teacher, but I wanted to be a student every minute I wasn’t teaching. Jen was right, I needed to be at Book Passage. And if you are serious about your work as a travel writer, but having a hard time finding your way, or just looking for the next sign post, you do too. Why? Here is what you can find there.

A Sense of Possibility. Travel writing can, at so many junctions, seem like an impossible career path. For those of us who are truly in love with words and writing, it can be deeply frustrating and demoralizing. But the environment at Book Passage is all about encouragement and possibility. There are places where your stories can see the light of day and at this conference, you will meet people who genuinely want to help you make that happen.

An Emphasis on Creating Good Work. On the first night of Book Passage, I listened to Tim Cahill (the founder of Outside magazine, author of Road Fever, and so much more) talk about new media. He struck me as something of a curmudgeon, a guy with tendencies to dismiss the digital world as not worthy of attention simply because it was digital. But I changed my mind about that when he said something along the lines of “all the Twitter and Facebook and blogging tools in the world are not going to help you if you can’t tell a story.” This emphasis on creating good work was repeated throughout the weekend. There are no easy shortcuts, you must sit and write and do so until it is good. It is hard and it is worth it.

Valuable Critiques from Respected Pros. For a little extra money, you can book an hour with a writer or editor who can help you whip your story into shape. They’ll give you actionable notes that can get you unstuck or out of your own head. This isn’t coddling positive feedback, it’s a private session that will make your work better. If you’re further along, you can do three days of this in a small group with Tim Cahill. His students seemed positively shinier by the end of the weekend.

Access to Experts. Book Passage is small with a low student/faculty ration. The travel-blogging class I co-taught with Jim Benning (the editor and co-founder of World Hum) had 12 students — that’s a lot of one on one time with plenty of opportunity for Q&A. Plus, faculty were always accessible between sessions — in the book store, over breakfast, during afternoon breaks on the patio. They don’t disappear when the sessions are over. They’re next to you in line for lattes and they are genuinely interested in what you’re doing.

Really Great Company. Book Passage is the travel writer’s tribal gathering. It doesn’t matter where you’re going next: Phnom Pehn or Honolulu or Dar es Salaam. Somebody has been there and can’t wait for you to go, but mostly, they can’t wait to read what you have to say about it. Really. These are people who are just as compelled to write as they are to travel and they understand. Not only do they want you to have an amazing adventure, they want you to write well when it’s over. And you kind of love all of them for that.

Fairy Dust. I’m a firm believer in conference fairy dust. At big conferences, you find it in the hallways between sessions or in the hotel when it turns out your New York friend has the room across the hall and you have a bottle of Scotch. At big events if you want fairy dust, you have to look and get offsite and make plans. But at Book Passage, the fairy dust seemed concentrated, like something great could happen at any moment. Like an editor could say, “That’s a great idea, write me that! I want to publish it.” Or an idea could go from abstract to concrete in front of your eyes. Or you could go home inspired, knowing that yes, it’s a fool’s path, of course it is, but you would not have it any other way. I saw all these things happen.

I sincerely hope I’ll be invited to return to Book Passage next year as faculty. But even if I’m not, I’m going to do what Jen Leo told me to do all those years ago. I’m going to save my money and go as a student. You should too. See you there.

Image: The Travels of Babar Record Cover by Dominus Vobiscum via Flickr (Creative Commons)

The secret formula for writing a successful travel narrative

by Don George on

For years people have been asking me for the secret formula for writing a successful travel story. I did my best to conjure this formula into my book Travel Writing, but as you know, there really isn’t any secret formula. Or is there? This year, in preparing for a spate of appearances where I was talking about travel writing – notably TBEX, a talk with Julia Cosgrove of Afar magazine, and a one-day in-the-field writing workshop that was part of the Book Passage travel writing and photography conference — I realized that I could distill what I’ve learned in three decades on both sides of the writer-editor relationship into a few pithy points.

So here’s my version of the secret formula.First of all, what is a travel story? There are many different kinds of travel stories, of course, but the kind I’m focusing on here is the travel narrative. Here’s my definition: A travel narrative is the crafted evocation of a journey, usually written in the first person, that is structured as a sequence of anecdotes/scenes, and that presents a quest that illuminates a place and culture.

Which brings us to a very important point: The narrative should have a theme – lesson, message, point, illumination – that you as the writer are trying to convey to the reader. If you don’t know what you’re writing about, then there’s no way the reader — or editor — is going to know, so don’t write your story until you know what you’re trying to say. Well, let me rephrase this: It’s fine to start writing before you know what you want to say, but at some point in the writing process, you have to figure out what you want to say – and then you need to go back and rewrite/reshape your story so that it conveys most evocatively and effectively whatever theme/lesson/point you want to make.

How should the travel narrative be organized? It goes back to the cave-and-campfire scene where one of our adventurous ancestors was describing the hunt for a Gnarly Mastodon. Like that Stone Age storyteller, you should give your narrative a beginning, a middle and an end.

To my mind, these break down like this:

The beginning introduces the place where the story is set and suggests the writer’s quest or reason for being there. (To test this notion, I recently looked through the feature stories in the current issues of three prominent travel magazines. In every one, by the end of the fifth or sixth paragraph, the writer had given one sentence that clearly articulated the reason why he/she had come to that place: the quest.)

The middle reveals the writer’s experience through a series of scenes that are ordered chronologically or thematically. (Usually, it’s easier to arrange these chronologically, but sometimes for dramatic purposes, it makes more sense to organize them thematically. You want to make sure that your anecdotes ascend in power as the story progresses, so if your best anecdotes are from the beginning of the trip, you’ll probably not want to tell your tale chronologically.) These anecdotes/incidents/encounters are the critical stepping stones that led you – and so will lead your reader – to the illumination/point/resolution that inspired your story.

The end presents the resolution of the quest and ties the story back to the situation introduced at the beginning. In the best narratives, this creates a kind of closure that gracefully sends the reader back into the world, but enhanced now with the experience and lesson your story imparted.

So, here’s what you have to do:

  1. Figure out what the lesson of your travel experience/story is.
  2. Figure out what steps led you to learn that lesson.
  3. Recreate those steps in your mind.
  4. Recreate those steps in words so the reader can live them with you.
  5. Craft your tale with a beginning, middle and end that shape and convey your lesson.

Voila! Instant travel narrative. Just add wonder.

Of course, the truth is that success in travel writing is ultimately in the execution, not in the design. But at least having the right design can get you off to a great start. The rest is up to you: First of all, to travel deeply and secondly, to choose and evoke your travel experiences in a way that transports the reader with you.

In this way, every travel narrative is the process of at least two journeys – the journey in the world and the journey in the words.

Bon voyage!

[flickr images via merrah’s and woodleywonderworks]

Andrew McCarthy discusses his new role: travel writer

by Don George on

For many people, the name Andrew McCarthy probably conjures images of iconic movies from the 1980s and 1990s, films such as St. Elmo’s Fire, Pretty in Pink, Less Than Zero, Weekend at Bernie’s, and The Joy Luck Club. But these days the actor is playing a new role: travel writer. Since he first wrote a piece on Ireland for National Geographic Traveler in 2006, McCarthy has published some two dozen travel stories in publications including the Wall Street Journal, Travel + Leisure, Afar, and Islands. He is now a Contributing Editor for National Geographic Traveler, and last year in the Society of American Travel Writers’ annual Lowell Thomas awards competition, he was named Travel Journalist of the Year. McCarthy will be guest of honor at the Book Passage Travel & Food Writers & Photographers Conference next month and has just signed a contract to write his first travel memoir.

I had the pleasure of interviewing McCarthy onstage at the National Geographic Auditorium in May. The evening was full of great anecdotes and insights; here are some that especially struck me.

Travel literature and the importance of scenes:

I asked McCarthy how he made the transition from actor to travel writer, and he said he began reading Paul Theroux and that Theroux’s travel books changed his life. (Reading Paul Theroux is, I think, excellent advice for any would-be travel writer.) Theroux and others taught him that in regard to travel literature, “when people do it well, they can really capture the essence of a moment in time, in a place — in themselves and in the place.”So,” McCarthy continued, “I just started buying tickets to places, a ticket into Capetown and out of Dar es Salaam 2 months later, and the rest I’d just fill in. Every year I’d take a couple of months and do that. I started writing scenes of encounters I had with people – just for myself — because that’s what I knew how to do, be in scenes. So I’d write the scene between me and the kid who picked me up on the moped in Hanoi and took me around for the day. I did nothing with them, I put them in a drawer.”

I love how McCarthy’s perspective as an actor illuminates the importance of scenes in travel writing. Deconstruct most great narrative travel articles, and you’ll discover a series of scenes – like a movie script, but supplemented and strung together with facts. One of the great arts of travel writing, of course, is choosing which scenes to put into your story to convey your point – the experience and the experiential lesson/s that you want to convey. In most stories, probably 90-95 percent of the available material, the totality of scenes from the trip, end up on the editing room floor. But the final story proceeds as a succession of carefully chosen and crafted scenes. In this sense, creating scenes is the essence of great storytelling, and McCarthy’s words made me appreciate that grounding truth all over again.

Scaffolding and chance in storytelling:
When I asked McCarthy how he goes about shaping a story on the ground, he quoted what John Gielgud said about acting: “Build a strong scaffolding and leave the big moments to chance.”

“That’s a bit what I do with travel stories,” McCarthy said. “Initially I’m very much in service of what I think I’m going to write about – and that always alters….”

There are two great points here, I think. You can’t support a story without the scaffolding, so your fundamental job as a travel writer in a place is to find the scaffolding for your piece. “I make sure I nail down a few lampposts when I get there,” McCarthy said, “hooks that I know I can swing from one [scene] to the other – I’ve got to get from here to here and suddenly I meet the guy selling ice cream who grew up wherever and that will swing me to where I can lynchpin to the next one….”

But equally important is Gielgud’s point about leaving the big moments to chance. That chance is the serendipitous spark and stuff of the story: the moment that you didn’t expect to happen – on the ground, in the writing – and that happened only because the scaffolding was sure and strong enough. These “big moments” are the unexpected gifts of traveling and writing – the epiphanies that suddenly give everything a clarity and meaning you hadn’t realized before. Surprising those big moments on the ground and then re-capturing them in the telling is the great quest and joy of travel/writing for me.

Fear, vulnerability and transformation:
I believe that every travel writer has a trip that changed his/her life. I asked McCarthy if he had a trip that changed his life and he immediately answered, “Yeah. Around 18 years ago I walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain, and that changed my life. “

He elaborated, “I walked across Spain for a month and it was just a transformative experience for me. I found it terrifying, and I was lonely and miserable for most of it, and then something happened and I had one of those experiences that you have – I went there to see if I could take care of myself and I discovered that I was taken care of. It wasn’t a religious experience but it was some kind of experience where I felt unafraid in the world on a deep level for the first time. I carried so much fear with me in the world that I didn’t even know I carried it until it was suddenly absent for a short time — and that changed my life and started me traveling.”

A bit later, I asked McCarthy what travel does for him now, and he said, “When you go out in the world, you realize that you have to lay yourself vulnerable to the world and ask for help and you become much less fearful in the world…. I’m a great believer in the transformation that happens when you travel – I’m a better version of myself when I travel, I’m happier, I come home a better person.”

I was very moved by the conjunction of these experiences and truths – the way walking the Camino de Santiago had helped him confront the fears he’d been living with all his life, and the recognition of the vulnerability that is at the heart of the traveler’s situation in the world.

This has been one of travel’s great truths for me as well: that we are fundamentally vulnerable, reliant on others, when we move out into the world, and that cultivating the art of vulnerability is one of the traveler’s greatest challenges and rewards. Every time I travel I re-learn this lesson: the more I open myself to the world, the more the world opens itself to me; the deeper my trust, the deeper my reward.

I agree completely with McCarthy that in this way, travel makes us better, bigger, people, more attuned to the nuances of life, more embracing of its diversity, and ultimately, more embracing of ourselves.

Near the end of our talk, McCarthy articulated the passion that propels his travels: “I love going anywhere,” he said. “When I’m out the door, and I’m on my way — yeah, I miss everybody, but who knows what’s going to happen in the next x amount of days? I love that feeling….”

And I knew that though we’d walked different paths to find it, wanderlust had touched – and transformed — both our lives.

*****

You can view my conversation with Andrew McCarthy here.

McCarthy and I will converse again at Book Passage in Corte Madera, California, on Aug. 13.

A pilgrim at Stinson Beach

by Don George on

July 20, 11:30 am — I’m sitting at the southern tip of Stinson Beach, a glorious mile-long stretch of sand that borders the unincorporated, population 650 hamlet of the same name in Marin County, Northern California.

Stinson Beach is a ragged, flip-flops, bikinis, and board shorts kind of town, and whether you’re a Bay Area visitor or resident, it’s a terrific place to stop. A couple of inviting restaurants face each other across the sole street – famed Highway 1 – that runs through town; both have sun-umbrella’d patios that are intimations of heaven on a balmy, blue-sky day like today. There are arts and crafts galleries, a quintessential little-bit-of-everything market, B&B’s, and a beguiling bookstore with a compact, ecumenical and eminently Marin mix of books ranging from Zen treatises and Native American history and culture to mainstream mysteries and fiction, and a proud selection of work by local authors.

I love these riches, but they’re not why I come here. Stinson Beach is about an hour’s winding drive from my house, so it’s not exactly an on-a-whim destination for me; rather it’s a touchstone place where I come to gather myself. And today I need gathering.

So here I am, ensconced on a rock beyond an outcrop of massive boulders that separates this thin slice of sand from the main beach, where a couple hundred people are blissfully surfing, strolling and sunbathing.

I’ve been in this spot for 20 minutes and I haven’t seen anyone — except a teenaged couple who appeared holding hands literally just as I wrote “I haven’t seen anyone” and jumped when they saw me and now have abruptly turned back – and I like it that way.

In the 1980s and ’90s, when I was the travel editor at the San Francisco newspaper, I used to make a pilgrimage here every spring to write a column. This was the place where I gathered my thoughts, looked back on the triumphs and failures of the year past and ahead to the new year’s goals and dreams.It’s still a good place to take stock of things. The simplicity of the scene strips away the veneers of life, reduces the distracting complexities. Sea. Rocks. Sand. Sun. That’s it. The spareness helps me – makes me — slow down and pay attention.

The roar and swash of the waves echo in my ears, the salty sea-smell fills my nose, the sun warms like a hot compress on my shoulders, my toes wiggle into the wet cool sand. The water white-froths in, spreads into rippling fans over the sand, then rushes back. Again. And again.

A seagull web-walks through the waves, leaps onto a rock, scans the water for food. It prances with oddly brittle legs along the sand, flaps to the top of a rock and imperiously surveys the waves.

A slick six-foot seaweed pod washes onto the beach. A tiny insect scurries over my keyboard, a neon-green bug lands briefly on my screen.

I let the sea wash over me, let the waves fill my head and lungs, lose myself to this inconceivably old and ageless place.

I think: This is the same scene I witnessed two decades ago, quite possibly even the same rock I sat on then, scribbling in my journal as I tap into my laptop now. And if I come back in 20 years, it will almost certainly be the same still.

But of course, much has changed in those two decades. My children have grown up and moved on. My Dad and other loved ones have passed away. New jobs, new places, new books, old dreams.

And suddenly these words flow into my brain: Where does it all come together? What does it mean?

The sea swashing ceaselessly scrubs the mind clean.

I palm the rough, sandy surface of the boulder to my left, warmed by the sun, cradling sand in its pocks and green ridges of moss in its cracks, etched by wind, wave and rain.

Wisps like smoke from a seaborne fire drift around me, and on the horizon a bank of gray-blue fog gathers, curling at the top so that it looks like a frozen tidal wave. I think of the tsunami in Sendai, where my daughter traveled recently and saw the destruction with her own eyes, where the local man who was guiding her broke down and cried. All those uprooted lives….

Where does it come together? What does it mean?

The waves push glinting pebbles onto the shore, fan, recede. The seagull flaps away, unsatisfied, searching. Life is precarious, uncertain, brief. There is a precious precariousness at the heart of all things.

The sea swashing ceaselessly scrubs the mind clean.

The waves roar-splash in, getting a little closer now. The tide is coming in; the blue pebble we inhabit is turning in the celestial sea.

Where does it come together? What does it mean?

Focus. Enjoy the moment while you have it. Enjoy your loved ones while you have them. Recognize the gifts the world gives you: Inhale the sea, sink your toes into the sand, let the ocean-roar silence your mind.

Then take this simple scene home with you: Sun. Sand. Rocks. Sea.

The sea swashing ceaselessly scrubs the mind clean.

What it all comes down to, I think, is the relationships you forge, the experiences you embrace, the lessons you bestow, the bridges you make, the ideals you seed, the love you live and leave.

Dedicate yourself to creating something of value with your days. Something that will last.

The sea swashing ceaselessly scrubs the mind clean.

Where does it come together? What does it mean?

Sun. Sand. Rocks. Sea. A Stinson Beach clarity.

[image courtesy Erin Drewitz]

Embracing the moment: A lakeside lesson in Italy

by Don George on

I’m sitting at a bayside café in San Francisco, on a sun-spattered, blue-sky afternoon, reading my journal and traveling back to a similar day three years ago at a lakeside café in northern Italy, when I re-learned one of travel’s great lessons: the importance of immersing yourself in the moment.

As the summer travel season unfolds, it’s a good reminder that travel’s gifts can stay with us long after the journey ends:

At the Piccolo Hotel café, Garda, Italy:

I’m sitting lakeside at the extraordinary town of Garda in the extraordinary region of Lake Garda, about 80 miles west of Venice.

I’m at the end of an exhausting but also very wonderful two-week stay in this enchanted and enchanting region, and feeling that odd mix of delighted expectation at the prospect of returning home and melancholic sentimentality of having to leave a place that has now become a rooted and enriching part of me, that has shown me so much and reawakened so much.

How to compress the riches of this place into a few words? The beauty of the landscape, the sane slow pace of life – the enjoyment of life! History embodied in old stone palazzo, piazzi and farmhouses. Culture embodied in centuries-old frescoes and 21st-century fashions. Cobblestoned streets and soaring stony chiese. Pasta perfectly al dente. Exquisite house wine. Vineyard-latticed hillsides. Rows of trees brightly budding into green. Sitting at a café by a lake, watching the red and blue and yellow motorboats bob and the stately deep green cypress trees reach like green prayers for the sky.

Arranged before me is a spaghetti alla bolognese, a basket of breads (rolls, sliced baguette, breadsticks), a plate of cherry tomatoes with mozzarella and rocket leaves, a glass of crisp chilled white wine, a side glass of sparkling water. I’m watching sailboats skim the smoky blue surface of the lake – and I’m in heaven.

This is what I want to take back with me – the sense of exultation in small and simple things. The Italians seem to do life so well.

Sitting at a serene lakeside table exulting in the simple sensual richness of things is not the ultimate meaning of life – but if life is a book, I would like to make this sense the texture of the paper that book is printed on.

Or at least the Italy chapters. Of course other places have their own rich textures, but right here, right now, I am immersed in the Italian moment – and it is an exultation of almost indescribable depth and richness.

I am content. Perhaps this is what it all comes down to – a moment of cobblestoned, cypress-green, sun-caressed, vineyard-latticed, chilled vino bianco contentment.

The salad is delicious – the tomato tasting of sun and soil, the rocket piquant and fresh, the mozzarella silky and smooth. I savor another forkful of spaghetti and sigh.

I look at the stony cliffs to my right, the spectrum of greens, from lemon to pine; the elegant aging buildings that line the lakefront – tangerine, pale lemon, blood orange – like a long wonderful fresco. Outside the buildings on the cobbled piazza are dozens of tables covered in bright tablecloths – red, yellow, orange like the buildings. Ducks quack and squabble for breadcrumbs thrown by German tourists. A sleek ferry streams in, passing a sailboat that idles in the breeze-less afternoon.

I want to absorb this scene so deeply that this table, this lake, this slice of Italy, becomes a part of me.

I had never heard of Lake Garda before this trip, even though it is the largest lake in Italy, but from now on, whenever I hear “Italy,” I will think of this blessed place, and the peace and plenty I have found here.

Home life awaits. In less than 48 hours I will be immersed in that reality, dealing with deadlines, crazed by how much I have to do in so little time.

But I hope when the craziness threatens to overwhelm, I can stop and come back to this moment – a table covered by a cream-colored cloth, bright boats bobbing on the lake, tree-covered slopes to my left and right and pastel buildings and café tables behind me.

Good food and wine, good people, a surrounding of natural and manmade beauty, the synthesis of the old and the new, nature and design: a place where life proceeds with an effortless grace.

Three years later, at a sun-lit San Francisco cafe, I read these words and think: Contentment blooms anew on the shores of Lake Garda.