Travel Writing Courses:
Learning to Write All Over Again

This may be a no-brainer but if you can't put two sentences together you can't expect anyone to pay for your prose: you may need some travel writing courses. Inventor Thomas Alva Edison once said: "Success is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration." The same can be said for travel writing.

If you're an accomplished and published travel writer, great - you're ahead of the game and travel writing jobs may be yours for the picking. But if, like most people, becoming a travel writer is only a far-off gleam in your eye, it's never too late to get started.

Your first goal is to learn how to write for the travel market. You can do that on your own, by working on your writing or reading a book or two.

I've certainly read my share of books and have dipped deeply into self-help. But I've also taken excellent travel writing courses like this one that have helped immeasurably. Everyone has her own experience but in my case, I needed the extra nudge that came from working with a seasoned travel writer.

There are several benefits to taking travel writing courses. One is quality - someone with more experience than yourself will critique your work so your writing will improve right away, far more clearly than if you'd had to identify each mistake yourself. I've been writing for a living for more years than I care to count, and I still welcome the sharp eye of an editor.

The other advantage is speed. You'll learn to avoid mistakes and write saleable copy far faster if there's someone helping you along.

If you'd still rather go it alone, you'll need plenty of practice and patience. Reading a lot of good women's travel writing books should inspire you - these are exceptional women now, but most times they started life in an ordinary way, like you or me.

What you'll have to do is write, write, write. And then publish. In today's web-based society, article submission directories and websites are clamoring for content - so you have plenty of opportunity to practice, and then practice some more. Unfortunately, you won't know whether you're any good, because many websites will take anything that fills up their pages. Nor will you know if you're getting any better.

Even if you do opt for travel writing courses, these few simple rules of good writing apply as much to the travel writer as they do any other kind of writer:

• Write tight - avoid extraneous words
• Write like you speak - reread yourself out loud if you're not sure
• Use the active (the dog bit the man) rather than the passive (the man was bitten by the dog)
• Use descriptive action verbs - the woman shrieked, not the woman screamed loudly
• Avoid the word very - it adds nothing
• Unless you're famous or newsworthy or the editor asks for it, leave yourself out the story - your personal experiences aren't half as interesting as what you're seeing on behalf of your reader
• Be perfect when it comes to spelling, punctuation and grammar - editors despise mangled prose
• One fact, one sentence
• Vary your sentence length - alternate short and long

If you manage to stick to these rules, your writing will already be in the top 10%. The rest is just polish.