Edited by Lori Appling in Bethany Beach, DE.

The most essential gift for a writer is a built-in, shockproof crap detector.   This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it. -- Ernest Hemingway

Today:

• How to Turn Your Previous Travel Experiences into Checks
• Procrastination or Productivity?   Here's How I'm Faring (Part 1)
• How Lori H. Made $1,150 in Four Hours
• This Week's Featured Travel Publication:   Travelers' Tales
• More Opportunities and Resources for Writers

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Dear Reader,

I was flooded with email this past week from those of you who took the time to jot down your best tips for battling procrastination and writer's block.   I'll quote my favorites in upcoming issues and list them all on our website next week.  

But as I was reading through them I realized that my problem (and maybe yours too) isn't so much that I'm procrastinating as it is that I've just got too many other things to do.  

I'm not sitting in front of the TV or playing solitaire on the computer.   I'm answering emails, working out the details for our upcoming San Diego workshop, dealing with the product development and management of our written course on travel writing and, of course, writing these e-letters.

When I've got a moment to spare I'm going to family reunions and birthday parties…dance recitals and T-ball games.   I've even had out-of-town guests (twice) and a wedding since I've been back from Belize just 4 weeks ago.    

So while it's true that I might be procrastinating a little bit, it feels like there just aren't enough hours in my day.

I made this complaint to my friend Lisa who works at Early to Rise (Michael Masterson's daily email service) and she suggested I take a minute to run my profile through Michael's Goal Check-Up Program (For those of you not familiar with this program you can find out more here

http://www.agora-inc.com/reports/700SDDGC/W700E976 .   She gave me a questionnaire to fill out with questions like:

• What time do you get out of bed in the morning?
• How many hours do you sleep at night?
• Do you create a daily task list each day?
• Do you get everything on your list done?
• Do you eat breakfast?
• Do you read in the morning (newspaper, mail, magazines, etc)?
• How long is your commute to work?
• How many of your emails are work-related?   Personal?   Solicitations?

There were 100 questions total.   I answered them all and sent them through their system to see where I might shave off potentially wasteful hours in my day and to find out what kind of advice they have for me in terms of accomplishing more in less time.

I'll let you know next week what I hear back.

Of course everyone's different.   So if you want your own productivity scan and customized review you'll need to answer these 100 questions yourself and apply for a personalized critique of your lifestyle and work habits here:

http://www.agora-inc.com/reports/700SDDGC/W700E976

In the meantime, buried amongst all the procrastination-fighting tips I received this week I got the following question from reader Naomi M. in Washington State...

"Most of the travel I've done is in the past, as I no longer have the funds to go like I used to. Can I still write relevant travel articles about places I've been many times, although the travel there is not current?"

I should think that if I wait any longer I'm going to have the same problem with my Belize articles so I asked freelance travel writer Steenie Harvey for her take on the matter.

I'm including below her advice for doing it if you must.

Have a good weekend and please keep me up-to-speed on your travel-writing success. If you have a story to share, send me a quick note at lori@thetravelwriterslife.com .

Jenny Aarts from Sydney Australia wrote this week to say that she just received word her article on Samaria Gorge in Crete was accepted for publication in The Traveler.  

Sharon Castner had similar success this week too.   She pitched her article on bungee jumping to Tom, the editor at The Traveler, and he accepted it for publication as well.

-Lori

Lori Appling

Director, AWAI's Travel Writer Program

P.S. I met both Jenny (in Paris) and Sharon (in Chicago) earlier this year at our live travel-writing workshops.   Graduates from these workshops boast more success and see more bylines than most, which is why these events always sell out. To boost your own chances of success many times over, join us in San Diego this November 11-14.   These stateside events mean fewer days away and less travel expense than our overseas programs, so they always fill up fast. To find out more, visit: http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/workshop/bb

P.S.S. Know a friend or two who'd enjoy the freedom and independence of a writer's life? They, too, can sign up to receive this free e-letter weekly at: http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/eletter

How to Turn Your Previous Travel Experiences into Checks
By Freelance Travel Writer, Steenie Harvey in Ireland

Writing about places you've traveled in the past can be tricky.

The further back in time you go, the harder it can get to make descriptions work. Places change – think of the fall of communism. What visitors experienced in Poland 12 years ago bears little resemblance to a visitor's experience today. The monuments may be the same but it's the subtleties that lend the most color to travel writing.

Much also depends on the destination and the type of article you intend to write.   Writing about 'Rome's 10 Must-See Art Treasures' is far easier than trying to capture the essence of life on Rome's streets today when you haven't been back in years.

If you're going to try writing about past treks, you should keep these things in mind…

1.   It's vital to keep abreast of what's happening – and has been happening - in the destination you plan to write about.

Say you visited Cornwall in south-west England a couple of years ago. You can still picture those quaint fishing villages and smugglers' coves...taste the cream teas and Cornish pasties...capture the romance of what it felt like exploring the ruins of Tintagel. Cornwall can't have changed that much -- neither can Boscastle, that cute village with the riverside craft shops where you stayed.

I'm sorry, but you cannot send your readers there. A few weeks ago, Boscastle was completely devastated by the worst floods in Cornwall for centuries. Half the village homes were swept away.

Or take Ireland. Almost every travel writer mentions traditional music in smoky pubs. But despite your past experiences, describing the Emerald Isle's drinking dens as 'fug-filled' would be a huge mistake.

Last March, Ireland introduced a smoking ban in public places – pubs included. Let your readers taste the Guinness, hear the wild cadence of a fiddle – but don't tell them they'll choke. Instead, you'll have to show them the poor bedraggled smokers puffing in the rain.

2. Writing about somewhere you haven't visited for years demands tremendous care. Lots of research. Lots of fact-checking.

Has that gorgeous Spanish fishing village now burgeoned into some revoltingly tacky resort? Check the local web site. And look at news sites to help your article seem more timely – and also to avoid making silly mistakes.

Even if you took notes at the time, chances are many of them are now useless. Your credibility with an editor will plummet to zero if you make amateurish errors like this:

'The specialty in Trattoria Luigi is seafood risotto. Studded with clams, cuttlefish and sea urchins, for 7,000 lire it's the best value risotto in Genoa.'

Even without accounting for inflation, that price is ludicrous. Italy now uses the Euro - and has done for almost four years.

As food often gets mentioned in travel articles, you may be wondering how to get around pricing questions. I'd say that unless you're prepared to make lots of phone calls, the best idea is use the Internet to find restaurants with web sites. This won't work for every country – I can't imagine how you'd tackle it for some village in Laos - but many restaurants (particularly in cities) have online menus that include prices.

In Croatia, for example, Zagreb's tourism and convention web site has a link to dining-out recommendations in the capital. It includes a huge list of restaurants, many with their own web sites. If you were in Zagreb a while ago, you could make use of the site and then write something like this:

"In Zagreb, the emphasis is more on meat dishes than seafood. On Cucerska Cesta Street, Vepar Restaurant is noted for wild game – try srneci medaljoni sa visnjama (venison medallions with cherries). Excellent value at 52 kuna ($8.84)."

Who knows whether the food is outstanding, but you'll sound authoritative. And you're not telling lies. You're only suggesting readers try it – and venison for less than $9 seems like a great value by any standards.

3.   Probably the biggest pitfall about writing this kind of article is falling in love with your own out-dated memories – and then using them. Like so:

A meeting place for east and west, Istanbul's Kempinski Hotel swirls with intrigue. Rumor has it that KGB agents from Moscow regularly conduct their business behind the potted palms...

KGB agents? An editor will know this nonsense comes straight from the annals – or think you've been gorging too many ancient spy stories.

To figure if resurrecting past travels would work for me, I dug out an article I wrote about winter travel in the Scottish Highlands. Written in 1991, it was for a U.K. magazine called Best. It's not brilliant – I'd only been writing for two years – but the editor thought it good enough to publish.

DISCOVER THE DELIGHTS OF THE SNOWY SPEY VALLEY

From January through to late April, the Spey Valley's spectacular mountain backdrop is transformed into a frozen tableau. This Scottish retreat is a mecca for winter sports enthusiasts, but you will also find plenty of cleared paths for hiking and miles of snowcapped scenery.

Any one of the hospitable villages along the 30-mile stretch of river between Newtonmore and Grantown-on-Spey is worth a visit. Arranged around the Cairngorm Mountains like a necklace, the villages of Kingussie, Aviemore and Carrbridge offer a wide choice of activities and entertainment. Castles, museums and even whisky distilleries are open to visitors...  

It needs a fair bit of polishing. But my initial reaction was that I could probably sell this same piece to a U.S. publication without doing too much work.

At first glance, all that's needed to update the article is to do something with the Accommodation Fact Box. I don't know if the guest-houses are still in business – or what they charge. But that's easily solved by finding some Spey Valley B&Bs on the Scottish Tourist Board's web site.

Much of the article is timeless. Frost spangling on rooftops...icicles dangling from eaves...winter in the Scottish Highlands is ALWAYS cold. And although giving lots of detail helps color any piece, you don't have to include every last dollar and cent. For example, I didn't think it necessary to give souvenir prices in the original article:

Further up river is Grantown-on-Spey. Queen Victoria stayed at the Grant Arms during her tour of the Highlands in 1860 and described the town as ''very amusing and never to be forgotten''. Windows display elegantly carved duck's head walking sticks, Highland swords and daggers, pottery-ware, and – yes – yards of tartan. Look out for jewelry studded with the local semi-precious stone – smoky-brown Cairngorm quartz.

I tell readers they can see floodlit curling matches in Aviemore, walk the ruins of Ruthven Barracks, captured by the Jacobites for Bonnie Prince Charlie. So far, so good. But then I hit problems:

At Garva Bridge, the infant Spey is barely wider than a banner. This was once a halting place for the great cattle droves and you'll still see the shaggy, toffee-coloured beasts roaming the hillsides. But to really delve into the past, head for Kingussie. Pronounced King-YEW-see, this village of small granite houses is home to the Highland Folk Museum.

The HFM now has its own web site. Since my visit, the museum has split into two. The original is still in Kingussie but a new Folk-Park was recently built in Newtownmore – and that's where all the outdoor exhibits have gone.

For a winter travel article, my descriptions of primitive Black-Houses and Clack Mills are useless: opening times show the Folk-Park now closes between November and April. Glad I checked – the last thing any of us want are letters from readers raging about wasted journeys. Yet there's enough in the article to convince me that with a lot of care, it's possible to bring past travels back to life.

4. One final point. An article shouldn't read like some 'Last Days of the Raj' memoir. The easiest way to avoid making your writing sound outdated is by using the present tense where possible. And don't emphasize what you did - tell the reader what's in it for them.

If there's only a single frame left in your camera, save it for a picture of the Spey Valley's most photographed beauty spot – the slender span of a packhorse bridge at Carrbridge. Built in 1717 at a cost of £100, it's straight from an old-fashioned snowy Christmas card.

Few readers would guess this wrap-up paragraph was written in 1991, not 2004.

[About the Author: Born in England to   Latvian and English parents, Steenie Harvey moved to Ireland in 1988 with her Scottish husband and their daughter. Though she has no formal training as a writer, Steenie discovered she had a knack for it when, on a whim, she sent an article about her search for an Irish cottage to a British newspaper... and got a check in return. That was the start of an impressive career.

An accomplished and proven freelancer today, Steenie is "International Living's" roving Euro-editor and also writes about travel, folklore, and real estate for publications both at home and abroad, among them "The Daily Telegraph ," "The Independent," The World of Hibernia," "The World & I," and "Spotlight."

Steenie will be joining Jen Stevens and John Forde in San Diego this November for our next live Travel Writing Workshop. Reserve your seat today and receive a $100 Early Sign Up Discount. AWAI Students receive an extra $50 off and ITWPA members get an extra $200 off the Early Bird Discount Price.   For more details visit: http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/workshop/bb or call Agora Travel toll free at: (800) 926-6575 or   (561) 243-6276.]

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The Write Way to Travel is a FREE weekly newsletter from the American Writers & Artists Institute, available to AWAI students and friends.

© 2004 American Writers & Artists Institute

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