Thanks so much,
EAJ

Tim: Dear EAJ,

This is a question I hear a lot. Excuse me if I'm a little terse here. It's not about travel. It's about writing. Your friend — if he wants to publish stories — has got to think about readers first. I mean here's what he seems to be saying: I want to travel and I think readers should pay me to do it. Why should they if the writing isn't hard and sharp, instructive and edifying?

So my advice would be to think about travel writing from the writing angle. Provide readers with a well-thought-out, well-written, insightful article. At Outside we often get manuscripts from people who want to finance their travels with writing. Usually these are little more than journal entries. Well, good. That's raw material. It needs to be shaped, considered, structured. The writer needs to ask: Is there any lesson — moral, physical, emotional — to be derived from events related?

So my answer would be to work on the writing. Write well. Engage the reader. They (readers) are pretty sharp, and I think they see through articles written by people who want them to finance their travels. They feel a small bit of condescension.

Sorry about being so sharp here. You've hit on a pet peeve of mine. I'll say it again: It ain't about traveling, it's about writing.

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