Flightster

Stand Out by Standing Up

• by Colin Wright
• on November 23rd, 2010
• 1 Comment

Travel writing is one of those jobs – like supermodel masseuse and professional beer-taster – that everyone wants to do and many people have tried their hand at, but few people actually make a buck doing.

The thing is, travel writing isn’t difficult, but it is difficult to establish a voice and a brand; two things that are necessary if you want to stand out and be taken seriously in a field full of really talented, ridiculously well-qualified individuals who have been doing it much longer than you.

I’ve said this before, but I don’t even consider myself a travel writer so much as a writer who travels, and that is part of why I don’t have too much trouble getting writing gigs when I want them. The fact that I don’t play by the travel writing rules makes me stand out – makes me an anomaly of sorts – and that leads to a different kind of storytelling and a different kind of story.

I have written articles in the past that were more traditional travel-writing fare, but I found that describing monuments and restaurants in detail, down to the price of admission and best items to try on the menu was not my cup of tea or my forte. I could do it, sure, but it was forced and anyone who read it would have felt the same awkwardness that I felt writing it.

I was trying to fit the mold – the ‘right’ way to be a travel writer – and it wasn’t sticking. I wasn’t passionate about it.

Screw that.

So I moved on and just started writing the way that I talk.

I’m a bit more conversational in my writings than most, and I use stories from the places I travel to as illustrations for overarching points or philosophies I want to expound upon. I throw around big words (like ‘expound’) and don’t put on kid-gloves to appeal to that 5th-grade reading level audience that most newspapers are forced to cater to.

I’m also not afraid to put myself in my writings (obviously), which is something that many travel writers frown upon as arrogant or taking away from the main point, which should be the place you’re describing in detail.

I’m telling you all of this not so you can copy my methods (in fact, you probably shouldn’t…more on why in a second), but so that you can see there are many ways to skin a cat, and you should try a bunch of them before settling on the traditional method, which may or may not be the best fit for you and your cat-skinning-proclivities.

I convey ideas this way every day and that’s why I write this way. I’m better at it than at any other method, and I’m better at it than anyone I know. It’s MINE; no one is better at being me than me.

How do YOU convey ideas?

Are you more of a visual person? Maybe you should focus on travel photography.

More interested in personalities than landscapes? Shoot portraits of people as you travel the world.

Interested in the lifestyles people in other countries live day to day? Specialize in ‘day in the life’ photo stories, which document the various important aspects of a normal person’s day in another country with a series of amazing photographs.

Boom. Right there we’ve got a brand waiting to be born. For the right person, anyway.

By using your specific traits, you can create your own image, your own methods, your own unique approach to the field of travel writing (or travel documenting, if you’re looking to do more photography or video than typing or scribbling).

This method of deciding how to communicate your experiences and travel stories to others achieves two ends:

1. it allows you to do what you love for a living, rather than getting to enjoy traveling and then suffering through the task of telling others about where you’ve been…not an ideal lifestyle
2. it helps you stand out from the crowd when you’re showing your work and looking for gigs with different kinds of travel periodicals, blogs, TV shows, etc.

Both are vital, because without the first you won’t want to keep traveling for very long, and without the second you won’t be able to make the money you need to fund your adventures.

Be bold! Be vibrant! Be experimental! Be unapologetic!

And most of all, be yourself.

Trying to be anyone else will leave you old, bitter and scraggly, running around in your grey dreadlocks and fisherman’s pants, muttering about how travel used to be fun.

Stand out by standing up for what makes you unique and sharing it with the world.

Colin Wright

Colin Wright is a minimalist, branding expert and serial entrepreneur. While running his blog Exile Lifestyle ,his branding studio Colin Is My Name and his e-publishing business ebookling. Colin travels the world (moving to a new country every 4 months), meeting up with amazing people, giving talks (to audiences ranging from tech industry professionals to college students to Catholic school girls) and hunting down new and interesting experiences.