Travel blogging: Can you even be a travel writer anymore?
Travel blogging: Can you even be a travel writer anymore?
Kitty Webster
Can you even be a travel writer anymore? A successful one? A good one?!
Certainly, in this current climate of unpredictability—the ‘will they, won’t they’ of lockdowns and border closures—you’re more likely to garner followers, likes and clout for writing about sourdough rather than seeking, soaking or sunning. However, the growing ‘glut’ of influencers living on our dime is undeniable, and even if we Australians claim not to trust their influence, we still can’t get enough of their content and coverage of the great unknown.
So, what do you do to become a respectable travel writer and not just another influencer? Take it from someone who is, essentially, a washed-up travel writer, there are many things you should learn about writing, and about yourself, before you take the plunge. I’m no longer a travel blogger, and it’s not just because I’m no longer a traveller.
Figure 1: Untitled—with Kitty Jay by cyclingabout.com, 2014, photograph.
Six months before a ‘trip of a lifetime’ with an ex-partner of mine, we decided to start a website that documented our adventures, reviewed our gear and detailed the mission of cycling push bikes around the world.
Given our respective backgrounds (his in bike sales, riding and mechanics; mine in writing, teaching and entertaining) he would write most of the gear reviews, and I would write most of the travel blogs. And so it was that we were travel writers, without the need to find an external site to host our ramblings; we could post anything, anytime.
Figure 2: It's a tad dusty on the roads in Cambodia! The locals on motorbikes are well aware of this fact - they wear masks! by cyclingabout.com, 2014, photograph.
I’ve recently re-engaged with some of the content I produced for that website, and while it’s mostly harmless fun, it’s often not even close to the enlightened commentary I believed it to be at the time. Instead, it’s similarly awash with the largely unacknowledged white privilege that goes on in a high percentage of current-day influencer and travel blogging.
Although my pieces weren’t the ‘lazy, half-hearted attempts’ found on many travel websites and blogs, and they certainly got better as I continued, I wish I’d learned more from travel writers and bloggers who’d done it before me! The main thing I know now—and knew then—is that there’s more to travel writing than being a ‘good writer’; it’s a good place to start but you must progress from there.
The main thing you need to do, according to travel writers/bloggers who’ve been at it way longer than the two-and-a-bit years I did it, is read. Much like reading fiction will improve your fiction writing, reading travel writing will improve your travel writing!
Read not only to improve your style and content, but to figure out what the heck a ‘lede’ and a ‘nut graf’ are so that you’re not fossicking about in the dark, and neither are your readers. (For your information, a ‘lede’ is the enticing opening to a journalistic piece. A ‘nut graf’ is a nutshell (‘nut’) paragraph (‘graf’) following the lede—establishing and expanding on the context, significance or frame of reference for that piece).
The other aspects of travel blogging—either embarrassingly prolific or woefully missing—are hotly debated, but there’s a general consensus amongst long-term travel bloggers:
Be authentic! Readers will pick up on a lack of authenticity in your writing
Get some perspective and learn from the people who’s country you’re travelling in: ask good questions, and listen carefully to stories and histories; do the work
Do not present your opinions as facts
Acknowledge your shortcomings and privileges. Acknowledge that travel is extremely exclusive and unattainable for most people, then, find ways to actively combat this • Be clear on the differences between travel and tourism, and which you are writing about
If you are monetising your writing/blogging, be upfront about your sponsorships, brand affiliations and the reasons behind them
Listicles aren’t much more than fluff pieces, especially when they contain value judgements like ‘the 10 best pasta places of all time’: go for meaning over click-bait. And yes, I realise the irony in including this in a list!
Image 3: It’s time to explore by Samuel Girven on Unsplash 2021, photograph. Copyright 2021 by Samuel Girven. CC BY 2.0.
Travel blogging can often now devolve into influencers and bloggers ‘doing’ travel, as though countries are a series of bosses to beat in a video game. It has become about people being in a country, or some approximation of that country, as opposed to about that country itself. If, once you’re back out on the road, you travel conscientiously, learning all the while and keeping in mind the tropes of travel writing that are so easy to fall into, you might instead become someone who contributes positively to the worlds of travel and writing.
Or, like me, quit travel writing and believe that a tree falls in the woods, even if it isn’t blogged.