1. 50 Travel Magazines That Want To Publish Your Writing
2. Blog Your Way Into Writing Work
3. 4 Tips to Add Personality to Your Writing
4. Podcast: Writing for the Web
5. Top Freelancers’ Traits
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Top 5 Weekly Posts for Writers...
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Interview with a travel writer...
No interview this week.
But check back next week.
There are more interviews to come...
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Join the Carnival of Travel Articles...
Anyone with a travel blog should check out the Travel Minx and join in on the newly created Carnival of Travel Articles.
I discovered this blog the other day via a post at Perceptive Travel and went to check it out.
The first ever Carnival of Travel Articles presented a vast collection of posts from around the world, including our friend Sheila’s post about Japanese Vending Machines.
But my favorite post would have to be ‘Take a Virtual Walk in New York City this afternoon.’ What a useful tool.
The next carnival is due at the end of July.
Follow this trail to submit your travel post.
By the way, it turns out Shona Riddell, the author of Travel Minx, is a fellow New Zealand. It really is a small world after all…
Monday, July 09, 2007
Photography for the travel writer...
Two things happened recently that have caused me to focus on photography.
The first had to do with an article I was writing for an Australian magazine about ‘organizing your holiday photos’. I needed to send through some photos to accompany the article but I had lost all my best shots when my computer crashed a month or so ago. So all I could send in were second rate ones - the editor pointed out that they appeared washed out…which was true. I had, by the way, mentioned in the article how important it was not to store photos only in the computer, using my lost photos as an example!!
The second reason I’m focusing on photography is because I have finally got my new digital camera. I picked up an Olympus SP550 the other day and now have a less than two months to learn how to become proficient with it before heading off to Spain and New York.
So I’ve been surfing the internet to learn all I can about taking good travel photographs.
Here’s some of what I found in my travels…
Fodor’s Focus on Photos - How to Take Travel Photos like a Pro
Taking good travel shots can be a snap
The Restless Eye: Travel Photography
The Ten Most Common Photographic Mistakes
The Law For Photographers
Travel Photography: Taking Culture Rich Photos
Cultural Photography: What are the Attributes of a Great Cultural Photographer?
Food Photography Tips
Hot, Hot, Hot! Tropical Travel Photography
How to Take Better Pictures Outdoors
Breaking Shooter’s Block
Get the Picture
Wide Angle Photography - Shooting from the Hip
How-To: Photographing Food In A Restaurant (and Elsewhere On The Road)
Learn To Photograph Markets
Along the way, I found a few more sites to add to my RSS feed:
Andre Gunther Photography
Dsphotographic.com
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.
Sphere: Related ContentThursday, July 05, 2007
Top 5 Weekly Posts for Writers...
1. Are You Confident Enough To Be Simple?
2. Strategy: 40 Outstanding Blog Links, Bookmark Carefully
3. How to Maximize Your Day Job While Creating a 4 Hour Work Week
4. 20 Ways to Get Free or Cheap Books, and Give Away Your Old Ones
5. Seasonal Traffic and How to Capture It for Your Blog
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Interview with a Travel Writer…Nicole Cotroneo
This week we talk with Nicole Cotroneo, a freelance travel writer from New York. She is a regular contributor for the New York Times and The Washington Post. Online, she is an associate editor of Globorati, a luxury travel website and author of the travel and food blog NY Girl Eats World.
Hi Nicole and welcome to My Year of Getting Published. Thanks for finding time during your travels to stop in and chat.
1. Did you always want to be a writer? How did you get started in writing?
Always. I remember writing poems in third grade -- and I had a very generous teacher who praised them. God bless her. Fortunately, as I got older, I realized that I was a terrible poet and I turned to prose instead. I still was quite a dreamer, though. Even through college I had the great delusion that I would make a living writing fiction. But then I graduated and, well, I had to eat. So I began freelancing for a small, community newspaper. I'd never even written for my college newspaper. I had to learn how to do "journalism" real fast. Luckily I was working with some fine writers and editors who gave me a crash course in the biz. Everything I know I've learned from working with talented people.
2. What do you consider your first "break" as a travel writer?
I was an assistant editor at a Long Island newspaper and I was sharing an office with a writer who was enormously overqualified for our paper. In addition to being a published novelist, he'd written travel pieces for papers and mags like the LA Times and GQ. We hit it off and he offered to put me in touch with a travel editor at The Washington Post. I pitched her a story and she gave me a shot. A very lucky break, indeed.
3. What advice would you give to someone who is considering going into travel writing? Any tips to breaking into newspapers and magazines?
Don't be afraid to start small. We all want to see our byline in national magazines, but the only way to get there is to write, write, write for anyone and anything (well, you know -- with some discernment). Prove yourself to the editors you're working for on a local level and they will recommend you to their friends working in the Manhattan skyscrapers.
4. What do you see as the future for travel writers in the printed media and online ?
There's been an obvious shift in our industry. Online outlets have earned great credibility. They can break news faster than print media can. Before I started my blog I had a very snobbish attitude toward blogging -- those writers were the ones who couldn't get published. It was a terrible and narrow-minded view. I realized that I'd been living under a rock when I opened up Food & Wine one day and read an article about a food blogger. That was a big wake-up call for me. Now, I'm a complete convert. I'm not only blogging, I'm helping edit a luxe travel news and trends website.
5. As a writer and traveler, what are the biggest challenges you face on the road ?
Aside from the obvious safety issues, language barriers, etc., I think knowing when to put the pen and pad down is very difficult. As a writer I find that I process everything I see and do in my travels as a potential subject for a piece. Sometimes I have to pause and tell myself to simply enjoy the moment. When you're scribbling in a notebook, you're missing half the experience. Unless you're on a specific assignment, it's OK to let the moment wash over you. You have to trust yourself enough to know that those emotions and memories will stay with you -- and you can pull from them later.
6. Finally, what is your favorite place and why ?
My goodness, that's the hardest question yet! Last year I spent a great deal of time in southern Italy. It's a region that's still largely authentic. For a week I rented a little villa in a fishing village called Praiano on the Amalfi Coast. I suppose if there's one place I'd wish to be at any moment it would be there -- cooking in my little kitchen with fresh lemons I've picked from the tree outside, or at the beach, bobbing in the salty, emerald sea.
(note from Liz: Nicole's article Hey Neighbor is all about her stay in Italy)
............
Previous interviews:
Barbara Sjoholm
Mike Gerrard
Heather Hapeta
Thomas Swick
Leif Pettersen
Rolf Potts
Ian Mackenzie
Sheila Scarborough
Graham Reid
Candy Harrington
Terah Shelton
Rudy Maxa
Shannon Hurst Lane
Wendy Perrin
David Whitley
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Travel by the book…
I spent the weekend reading through old copies of National Geographic Traveler magazine. Family and friends called it ‘laying around reading magazines’. I called it ‘market research’. It’s funny how the same activity can have such different meanings to different people.
So while doing my ‘market research’ I came across one of Daisann McLane’s Real Travel Columns called ‘By the Book’ (March 2006).
Daisann wrote ‘Every journey is a story that’s made infinitely richer by what gets read along the way’.
It got me thinking. So far, all I’ve read since deciding to go to Spain is guidebooks - Lonely Planet, Frommer’s, Fodor’s etc. I haven’t really had a chance to read anything written from a fiction or personal memoir take. Maybe it’s time I did. So I’m off to the library this week to find some books that go past where to stay and eat. I think I hunt out Hemmingway’s books about Spain.
Course, I’ll still have to come up with a book or two to read while I’m on the road (make that plane)
Any thoughts?
How do you decide what to read before you go?
Or is it what you read that has made you decide to go?
Monday, July 02, 2007
Things to consider if you’re thinking of creating a new blog…
I recently read two very interesting articles about things to consider when planning a new blog.
The first article, Use blogs as a career tool for becoming super-connected, looks at why blogs can be a good career move.
According to the Brazen Careerist (aka Penelope Trunk),
“Blogging allows you to create a high-quality network for yourself based, not on the old model of passing out business cards, but on a new model of passing out ideas.”
Furthermore, blogging also provides
“…the tools for blogging encourage people to measure the reach of their personal brand. You can measure the number of people who are talking about you (via Technorati) and the number of people who are visiting you (via SiteMeter), and you can see who is telling their friends to read you (via Mint).”
Of course, as freelance writers, we already know all this. Blogging provides us with an avenue to showcase our writing abilities and allows us to get our name in circulation. But it’s always interesting to read another person’s take on it and learn from other people's experiences.
Deciding to blog, however, is only part of the equation. You then have to decide what to blog about.
The second article, Choosing Another Blog Topic - Mind Map Review, is all about how to choose a blogging topic. Yvonne has done some serious brainstorming and created a great visual tool that highlights all the relevant issues you should consider before creating a blog.
Issues such as ’Deciding on Blog Topic and Focus’, ‘Finding Possible Popular Blog Topics’, and the need to ‘Explore the Niche’ before committing to the topic.
It definitely got me thinking…
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Monthly Roundup...(June)
Another month gone. And what did I do::
Query letters
- eight query letters sent (2 responses so far: “Thanks … but will give this story a miss” and “Sorry…we already have someone doing just this …”)
- one application sent for blogging position at Creative Weblogging (no response yet!)
Blog Carnival
- Hosted Carnival of Cities over at my Christchurch Tour Guide blog.
Blogging
- wrote (almost) daily posts at My Year of Getting Published.
- wrote 4-5 posts a week at Alzheimer’s Notes.
- wrote 2-3 posts a week at Christchurch Tour Guide.
Miscellaneous
- starting to organize my trip to New York and Spain.
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