Finally I thought I'd found myself a niche. Time to become rich, time to become famous, time to become a travel writer! I would travel the world, write funny stories about it and people would pay loads of money for my books and articles, because come on, how many travel writers can you name?
A couple of five?

Bill Bryson
Paul Theroux
Peter Moore
Michael Palin
Bryan Thacker

And that's about it right?

"Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family: Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one."
Jane Howard

If what you create is good, better or maybe the best, do you still need marketing?
Eventually you will be discovered, right?

Maybe, if you're lucky, your career will boost without having to do anything, although I guess chances are quite small.
But it happens.

Is paper out?
In this digital age, do we still need paper?
What about the trees? Hey, is the footer of your e-mails not saying "Consider the environment before printing this e-mail" ?

True, why would we still print things? Most people have a PC and wireless networks are everywhere.
You don't need to bring your full size 17 inch laptop anymore, but for a couple of hundreds of Euros you get yourself a notebook, an Ipad or an Amazon Kindle.

This week I have a quite tricky tip because every word of it can easily be used against me. But it's a very important phase in the writing process so it certainly needs to receive the necessary attention.

These days, lots of people take little time rereading their story, one particular part they tend to skip is the spelling check because nowadays we just let our spelling corrector run through the story and every stupid mistake is removed.

We think...

You may or may not remember that some time ago I've written an article called 9 Useless Things travelers tend to pack. If you didn't know, it's quite important that your read it before continuing this post!

What was it all about?
Well, shortly summarized, I was wondering what other people take on their travels, mostly to compare with my own packing list and to see if maybe I could get some tips for lighter or better packing. But what I found out was that people tend to pack the strangest things, and that there's some stuff that many pack but which is - in my eyes - totally redundant.
So I decided to write an article about that.

Why your readers like what you write depends on several aspects. Maybe you provide information that can't be found anywhere else, maybe you have different theories than others - like different impressions of the bible - or maybe your information is not unique at all, but you write it down in a different way than others. People like reading your writings because of your content and your style.

What most evidently follows on last week's tip Read read read is of course Write write write. To be a writer, you have to write. I bet you didn't see that one coming.
The thing is that you shouldn't only write a monthly article or a weekly blog post, but you should write much more - daily if possible - only to get experienced. The best way to do this is by keeping a diary or a blog.
I know, I know, the tough traveller inside you thinks that diaries are for little girls, but just give it a try.

I have always considered the best way to learn something is by looking how someone else does it. This in mind, I started reading the "classic" travel authors like Bill Bryson, Paul Theroux and Redmond O'Hanlon, not because I wanted to become a travel writer like them, but just because I enjoyed their books so much. Depending on what you expect from a travel story you might also want to add others to this list, Michael Palin for example.

"Oh no! Not another bozo who is going to tell us how to write a travel article. Welcome to the digital age, dumbass, try Google for a change and you might find out that the internet is full of people like you that think they can summarize the life of a travel writer!"

You don't have to deny it, I can hear you all thinking the same: "Why should we read another couple of tips on how to write?"

And you're right, if you perform a Google search on "travel writing tips", you'll find a huge load of results, so why read my tips instead of the once from others?
Because mine are better of course!