TRAVEL WRITING EXAMPLES

I HAVE been writing some of my private stuff lately (after getting other assignments out of the way) and thought about this topic … travel writing.

Many people travel and these days post their photos on social network. Few people write about things and places they see.

Fewer still write detailed descriptions of places they visited, things they saw, events they observed and people they met.

If you like travelling and writing, you can mix the two.

On top of that, learn to use the camera and take good pictures of the place you visit, things you see and people you meet and share that with others – as in publishing it in a magazine or newspaper, on a social network or on a website.

I have touched on this theme before but a few things I saw in the last few weeks have caused me to put these thoughts again for you – if you like travelling and writing.

I know a lot of people who travelled but who could not really describe the place and people they met, as well as experiences they had.

It is as if they have not really observed and appreciated the places and the people.

Now, back to the things that caused me to write this.

Firstly, if you read The National newspaper (here in PNG), you would have noticed a series of travel-and-writing articles that have appeared in the Tuesday’s edition, particularly the Transport PNG pages, you would have seen the articles by Bernie Leighton on his visit to PNG.

Leighton works for AirlineReporter and writes about flying in the different airlines in the world, their services and the places that they take him to.  

In other words, he flies from place to place, observes things in the planes and places, writes about all those – and gets paid for doing all that. (What a career!)

Read his articles and see how he describes the services by the planes he travelled on and learn from that – if you one day consider writing about similar things.

His articles have been published in the March 11, 18 and 25 issues.

Secondly, I watched a video clip of an author who spoke about creativity and writing.

She, Elizabeth M. Gilbert (born July 18, 1969), is an American author, essayist, short story writer, biographer, novelist and memoirist.

As Wikipedia tells us, Gilbert’s most famous work to date is her 2006 memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, which as of December 2010 has spent 199 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list, and was also made into a film by the same name in 2010.

 Photo: Elizabeth M. Gilbert. Pic from her website.

Eat, Pray, Love is a memoir, a record of how Gilbert spent her days travelling around the world.

The advantage she had was her trip was financed by an advance of US$200,000 (K487,000) given her by her publisher.

You can read more about Gilbert on Wikipedia and her website (www.elizabethgilbert.com).

You can also get her video clip at ted.com (http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius).

NOTE: I may not agree with everything Gilbert says but we all can learn something from her – or any other writer for that matter.