How do you become a better travel writer?

There’s no better way to improve your travel craft than reading travel writing content in your niche.

In my case, I devour travel guides in order to find ways of improving the way I write and present my travel guide content. And to become a better travel writer on my  personal travel blog Roving Jay (where I write about my nomadic adventures) I read travel writing articles from other influencers and subject matter experts in the travel writing niche to improve my skills.

I decided it was time to start sharing the articles I found the most useful. I hope you get as much out of these articles as I did.

Here’s the August 2019 Roundup

Travel Writing Books

I don’t think this is a new book, but it’s new to me, so wanted to include it this month. Find Your Niche
Uncover Your Most Meaningful Genres & Most Valuable Writing Opportunities By Roy Stevenson.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a travel writer, nonfiction writer, or fiction writer. The book market is saturated and the only way you can grab a slice of the attention is to identify a niche and become a subject matter expert in it.

So much has been written about the importance of niches, but I haven’t come across a book that focuses this directly on helping travel writers and bloggers to find a niche. So if you’re struggling to get into the writing groove and find your audience or tribe. this book could help you become more intentional about your travel writing.

This book is only available as a PDF download on Roy’s site, and I’ve reached out to him to see if he’ll participate in our author interview series to share why and how he chose this publishing route.

Here’s the Table of Contents to give you a better idea of what topics Roy covers in this book:

Find Your Niche explores different kinds of stories and writing genres to help you identify the niches you’re interested in.

Travel Writing Articles

Guest Posts from Travel Writers on Grammarly

Travel Photographer and Blogger, Erin Sullivan blogs at ErinOutdoors.com and wrote a guest post about 5 Tips for Thoughtful Travel Writing for Grammarly last month. I like what she wrote about talking to the locals:

One question I like to ask is, “What do you wish most people knew about (place)?” Write down your takeaways from your conversations with people so you can refer to them later. Learning to center someone else’s experiences instead of your own in your writing can help to tell a richer, deeper story.

Grammarly also published a guest article from Katie Diederichs from Two Wandering Soles. Katie’s article was about Responsible Travel Writing: A Brief Guide. Read what she has to say about striving for honesty over perfection.

FYI Katie we’ve just added Two Wandering Soles to our travel blogs accepting guest posts list, they’ve got a detailed list of guidelines on their Write for Us page.

Travel Writing Tips from the Experts

GoNOMAD Editors Max Hartshorne and Kent St. John, and Julia Dimon of the TV show Word Travels presented a seminar on travel writing for beginners in February at the NY Times Travel Show, and here’s a summary of the key takeaways. All good reminders for how the professionals do it—and here’s a couple of my favorites:

Promote Yourself: Travel writing is 20 percent writing, 80 percent marketing. Use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flicker, Travelistic, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Linked In and Digg to promote your work. Julia Dimon

Create an interesting blog and link to the best in the business…if they like you they’ll link back and blogs are a great way to become a better writer since it gives you that daily exercise of short writing. Max Hartshorne

Everyone is a local somewhere. You need not travel across the world to travel write. Start looking for stories nearby. This will also help you develop ideas for those exotic locals that you will eventually get to. “Think locally” is more than a bumper sticker; it is a skill that is coveted by travel editors. Kent E. St John

Did you discover a useful or inspiring travel writing article in August? Please share the link below. Anything to do with travel writing is fair game.