All Posts Tagged: the writing
Is Your Style Holding Your Travel Article Pitches Back? Part 2!
I don’t like to think of myself as a grammar geek.
Before I left the 9-to-5 world to freelance, I had several jobs that required editing publications, from letter-length to book-length with lots of magazines and printed newsletters in between, but that type of work stopped sparking for me after a few years.
A lot of editors (the ones you really want to work in particular) get a really high from perfecting a piece of writing–taking what the write meant to say and making it indelibly clear for the reader.
When discussions of grammar and style arise among writers, it is very rarely with that same verve, that sparkle with which editors discuss it. And, more often than not, it’s because writers misunderstand its purpose.
A+ grammar and crystal clear style is not intended to drown out your voice or make your writing sound just like everything else out there.
Quite the opposite.
Is Your Style Holding Your Travel Article Pitches Back?
I often find it quite comical that my job is (and was for several years even before I was a freelancer) to be a paid writer in English.
While I am a native English speaker, my degree is in Italian language and literature, and I had originally planned to become an Italian professor, so even when I started writing professionally in my pre-freelance full-time job, I didn’t immerse myself in the tenants of journalism, its writing style, or its specific stylistic rules.
Many of you tell me that you are in similar situations with your own transition to freelance travel writing. Your prior experience is in an area so divergent (science or technical writing, law, engineering and the like come up often) from mainstream journalism that you feel as if you’re coming from another language, even if it is English.
This: You Asked for Examples of Excellent Brand Content Marketing
A little while back, someone wrote me a question for the Monday Mailbag series that I wasn’t quite sure how to answer: what are some great examples of company content marketing writing (particularly blogs) and magazine articles?
Hard to answer, not because I haven’t seen them, but because there are so many!
Are You Putting Your Best Foot Forward When You Blog for Other Websites?
We all write online, right?
We write social media posts. We write blog posts. We write for other people’s websites (whether for pay or as a guest post).
On our blogs, voice matters. The “product” you’re selling (whether to advertisers, those providing free trips, or other types of sponsors) is often eye balls. And your voice and other unique aspects of your style are what distinguishes you in that race for eyeballs.
On travel company websites, the product is what they’re selling. It’s laid out there in black and white. Tours, safaris, hotel rooms, you name it.
With tourism boards, they’re selling a destination, its hotel rooms, its restaurants and its experiences.
The words are not the product.
Big Changes Are Coming to Our At-Home IdeaFest, Pitchapalooza, and TravelContentCon Programs
There are a lot of changes coming to our at-home programs–the versions of our live events, like Pitchapalooza, that take place over several weeks that you do from home rather than our location in the Catskills.
- major changes coming to ensure participants participate and finish their programs
- moving to a university-like model in many ways–your lessons and homework are when they are, and they’re due when they’re do–to move further away from the issues with online courses that people never finish
- new TravelContentCon and IdeaFest programs on the horizon
- IdeaFest (live or at-home) will now be a prerequisite Pitchapalooza (live or at-home)
- groups will be smaller and prices for some programs will change, but there will be much more personal attention as a result (in some cases more similar to a limited-term intensive coaching program, like at the retreats) and it will allow me to even run programs with just three people at a time if that’s who we have at that time (see–extra personal attention!)
- participation in group discussions (on a discussion platform for pitch- and idea-related programs or in group calls for TravelContentCon) will be a core component as it is essential to success–MFA programs are based on group critique sessions for a reason Read More
Are You Pitching Square Ideas to Round Magazine Sections?
I’ve learned to really hate the term “angle.”
It’s so mushy. What does it really mean? I poked around, and even Google didn’t seem very forthcoming with a definition. Here’s as far as I got:
“In books, it’s called the premise (a woman works her way through Julia Child’s cookbook in a year). In advertising, it’s called the handle (“Trix are for kids!”). In movies, it’s the concept (humans invade the magical habitat of peaceful blue beings on another planet). In an essay, an angle is the controlling idea.”
– Writer’s Digest
“This ‘angle’ is the specific way a news source addresses an issue by offering one perspective or point of view of that story. “
– New York Times
“Short for news angle, it is that aspect of a story which a journalist chooses to highlight and develop. Usually the most newsworthy of its key points. Also called hook or peg. ”
– The News Manual Journalism and Media Glossary
Over time teaching travel writing, and specifically generating article ideas, to writers, I’ve found that it does more harm than good.
A Very Special Webinar with Guests from Two Tourism Boards!
Photo by Cole Hutson on Unsplash
In the first webinar in our series on conducting interviews that take your stories to the next level, I talked about the very first interview that I ever did for my first blog with the editor of mega food website Epicurious.
At the time, to prepare for the interview, I read articles on tons of general journalism websites about how to prepare interview questions, and I dutifully wrote, re-wrote, re-worded, scraped, re-wrote, and re-worded all of my questions until I was sure I had the perfect set.
But when I was doing the actual interview, it lacked energy, connection, and opportunities to get great quotes because I was so focused on my prepared questions.
Are You Afraid to Pitch Because You Don’t Know What to Do Once a Travel Article Assignment?
Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash
We don’t actually talk about the writing part of travel writing much on this site.
And it’s not exactly because there are tons of other sites out there talking about to actually write publishable articles for travel magazines.
How Introducing Characters to Your Pieces Will Take Your Writing to the Next Level
In interviews and on panels at conferences, editors are often asked what they’d like to see in pitches.
The most common answer–that the writer is familiar with the magazine and pitching an idea that would actually work–we discuss regularly here.
But the one many editors also share (and secretly wish they could talk more about rather than the very basic pitching essential about) is that they want you to pitch them a story. With characters.
Why Interviews Are Secretly the Answer to Everything You’re Struggling with in Your Travel Writing
No matter what the question is, there is a recurring refrain that I hear from freelance travel writers struggling to earn their desired income.
Whether the question is:
- how often are you sending pitches?
- why aren’t you sending more pitches?
- how long does it take you to write a pitch?
- what is keeping you income low if you already have a full load of clients they have?
- what is keeping you from writing for bigger and better outlets
It always comes back to time.