A Year of Living (Not So) Dangerously as a Travel Writer

There are travel writers who stray far off the well-beaten path taken by most tourists and, in the process, find themselves eating protein of dubious provenance, using "private facilities" that are disgusting (and disgustingly public), and dodging kidnappers, pirates, and other persons of less than amiable disposition. The stories of their travels are often both riveting and frightening to armchair travelers who wouldn't think of trekking to a Timbuktu-like location, even if it did have a Holiday Inn, Golden Arches, and Super Walmart every three blocks or so along the main boulevards.

I'm not one of those travel writers, but in 2009 I did spend a year of living (not so dangerously) as a travel writer. Here's how the year unfolded for me.

On "Pearl Harbor Day" (December 7, 2008), I noticed that the Sunday Travel section of our local newspaper, the Marin I-J, was publishing a reader-submitted photo at the top of a column entitled "SIGNPOSTS." So I decided to submit a quirky little photo (shown at left) that I had shot of two sunglass-wearing dogs peering out of window as I walked along the "main drag" in Ketchikan, Alaska about six months earlier.

On December 30^th, the editor of the Travel Section (which also appears in other San Francisco Bay Area newspapers published by the Bay Area Newsgroup), notified me that my picture would run on Sunday, January 4, 2009. I promptly offered her a travel "destination story" which I had written about touring glaciers in Southeast Alaska, but alas, she had just finished work on BANG's annual Alaska issue and had no room for my story. But she was kind enough to compliment me on my writing and photos, and to suggest that I "shop" the story to other newspapers, which I did. And, as they say, the rest is history.

On Mother's Day (May 10, 2009) the San Francisco Chronicle ran my Alaska story and printed five of my photos. The check paying me for my first-ever published travel story came in the mail about a week later. A different version accompanied by yet more photos appeared in the print-edition of the Sunday Travel section of the Dallas Morning News about three months later. And in between, the Bay Area Newsgroup published a "staycation" piece I had written about one of Sausalito, California's little-known gems, the Bay Model (a large-scale hydraulic model of the San Francisco Bay Estuary, once run as laboratory facility, and now operated as a "natural history museum", by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers).

In the summer I joined the Left Coast Writers and Bay Area Travel Writers groups, and attended the acclaimed Book Passage Travel Writers and Photographers Conference. In September I took my first international trip as a published travel writer, spending a month in Europe, visiting nine locations in six countries, shooting over 3,000 photos, and gathering information for several stories which, as 2009 draws to a close this evening, are in various stages of production.

During the past year I've learned about "Social Networking", and how to "tweet" on Twitter and "Update My Status" on Facebook. In addition to the personal and private trip blogs I have put together for friends and family whenever I've been traveling during the past three years, I'm now writing two travel blogs: The one you're currently reading and a separate "reader-submitted" blog on the Web site (SFGate.com) for the San Francisco Chronicle.

So for me, 2009 has been A Year of Living (No So) Dangerously as a Travel Writer. I didn't consume any weird food, my "private facilities" were always en suite, and I wasn't chased by "bad guys" while I was "on the road." Compared to stories written by the "Indian Jones" ilk of travel writers, my travel experiences during the past year probably seem pretty tame and even downright b-o-r-i-n-g. But for me, it has been A Year of Living Most Interestingly, and I wish all of you who are reading this blog post the opportunity to live a Most Interesting Year Indeed in 2010.