Pico Iyer on the Tricks of the Travel Writing Trade
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 03.06.06 | 2:54 PM ET
Laurie King at Travel Writers’ News has published an interesting response from Pico Iyer to a question about how he writes such detail-filled yet seamless stories. Here’s a portion of his reply: “Let’s say I have to write a 30-page piece about Beirut. Before I go, I’ll read guidebooks and I’ll work out a rough itinerary for myself. And I’ll also work out a focus for it, some question I want to address, because it’s hard to go to a new place for two weeks and then try to say something about it. So I’ll make a focus as precise as possible. And a question that I want to unriddle. In Beirut it was, This is a center of tribalism, and it’s also a center of multiculturalism. Which is winning out, and what does Beirut tell you about the rest of the world? The rest of his reponse can be found here.
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
