Thomas Swick on Travel Writing: Where to Go
Travel Blog • Tom Swick • 07.17.06 | 1:43 PM ET
South Florida Sun-Sentinel travel editor Thomas Swick recently contributed a chapter about how to write compelling travel stories to the book “Travel Writing” (Leromi Publishing). The chapter is packed with great tips, and we’ll be publishing passages from it in the coming days.
Where to go: Only amateurs think that writing begins when you sit down at the computer. The professionals remember Sir Joshua Reynolds who, on being asked how long it took him to do a painting, answered: “All my life.” Travel is a genre of writing that encompasses, not surprisingly, the world: flora and fauna, architecture, language, history, food, music, religion, politics, art. All of a writer’s experience goes into his or her writing; it’s just that travel writers, because of their chosen form, need to experience more than most.
The first thing travel writers do is decide where to go. This decision is more important than it sounds. If you choose an obvious place—Paris, Hawaii, Sydney, Tuscany—you automatically increase the competition, not just against your fellow freelancers but against all the writers who have gone before you. Writing is about novelty, freshness, originality—“Make it new!” Ezra Pound exhorted young poets—and one of the most difficult things in travel writing is saying something new about a place that has been written about to death.
Unsung places often provide the best subjects for writers. Not only is there less pressure to come up with something different, but the story is often better because the experience was richer. People in less-visited places tend to be more curious, sympathetic, and grateful than those who live in heavily touristed regions. They appreciate that you took the time to come to their overlooked part of the world, and they are happy, usually, to share their stories.
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Tom Swick is the author of two books: a travel memoir, Unquiet Days: At Home in Poland, and a collection of travel stories, A Way to See the World: From Texas to Transylvania with a Maverick Traveler. He was the travel editor of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel for 19 years, and his work has been included in "The Best American Travel Writing" 2001, 2002, 2004 and 2008.
