Do you wish to break into travel writing? Be it on a professional basis or as a hobby, we are sure that the thought has crossed some people’s minds at some point in time. However, what people have done with these thoughts is the main issue, as you find a good number of them have shunned them away for lack of knowing how to act on them. In light of this, the question of how to break into travel writing becomes one of utmost importance. Travel writing does indeed require some level of skill, but the technicalities behind these skills are easily attainable by almost anyone.

Below are some seeds that you can sow when beginning your journey into travel writing and they will surely crop into travel writing masterpieces forged by your hand:

Increase Your Frequency of Reading

The best way to kick-start your career in any type of writing is to first establish an intimate acquaintance with reading material. This will help you take the vantage point of a reader, and walk in their shoes to help you better understand what type of travel based content is likely to churn positive emotions towards it.

A good place to start is by reading the highly rated pieces of travel writing content authored by the greats of the travel writing world. Take a keen interest in their language, the tone of voice that they use and their general approach when relaying information regarding various things. The frequency of interaction with such outstanding travel material will often times be commensurate to the assimilation of your writing and thought process to align with those pieces. This is the perfect way to begin your travel writing process as it will ensure that you are coming up with and writing travel material of the highest of standards.

For good reading material, look for travel magazines and ensure that you acquire a library card in case you don’t own one. In the event that all the above options are not possible, you should look for travel content in Google Magazines and Google Books.The whole idea behind reading a lot of material is not to imitate, but rather to have knowledge of what styles and genres of travel writing have already been used. In addition to that, you get to know more about your contemporaries. The same can be said when reading multiple sources of content in order to get ideas for descriptive essay for a school assignment.

Start a Blog

In the recent past, for you to have been considered a travel writer, you needed to have owned a more-than-average portfolio with great publication credits. These are no longer the requirements for you to break into travel writing today. Writers in thousands of numbers have been able to publish what they write exclusively or primarily via their blogs. These blogs have turned out to be advantageous as some of them have received print gigs, others have received great book deals. In addition to these, there are a good number of writers who have even had opportunities for free travel just because of having outstanding blogs.

On the other hand, it is worth noting that there are some travel bloggers whose posts don’t get recognized even when random readers come across them through Google searches. This should prompt you to start your own travel blog despite the chances of being looked down upon by many viewers.

As much as these disheartening possibilities are a reality, they should not deter you at all; in fact, they should make you strive to write the best of blogs. By desiring to appeal to many readers through your travel blog, you will find yourself striving to have the best travel content in the online world. It will push you into ensuring that your travel content’s floor is your competitors’ ceiling hence propelling your travel writing success to the stratosphere.

Offer Something Different To Your Readers

Most of the tips on the best ways to become a great travel writer revolve around nurturing your ability to create an exceptional pitch that stands out from the rest. This strategy is not only workable but is also the best approach you can take when seeking to break into travel writing.

One of the ways in which you can make this a reality is by using the power behind storytelling to make your travel writing content come off as unique. Such an approach will surely give you a wider scope of material which you can easily work with towards building a reputable travel writing career.

You can flesh out ideas for your travel stories from the actual travels around you. However, it does not mean that you should look forward to traveling solely for the sake of getting ideas for your travel writing. If you run out of ideas from your past traveling experiences, you can ask yourself about the travel experiences that capture a good percentage of your audience and create a story around them.

In addition to this, you should know that in order become an excellent writer, you should learn to optimize the traveling content that has been packaged in form of stories. One of the foolproof optimization techniques that you can use is formatting the content into a few paragraphs. This will help in finding your pitch a place inside your editors’ good books and thus prompting them to inquire more about it. The gold mine in travel writing is located in having unique storylines and if you can get into the habit of writing stories that haven’t been created yet, then you’ll have half the battle already won.

Find and Follow Up With the Right Editors

One of the most important assets that you should invest in for your travel writing career to kick off is finding the right editors. With the right editors, then the stories and travel content that you write will have a higher tendency of being absorbed by many people due to the pitch that they put in for you.

In regard to this, you should note that it is quite possible to spend hours and even days in waiting for the replies of editors that you are pursuing. The trick that you need to learn as early as possible is that, for you to excel in travel writing, you are required to have a heart of steel hence making you not shy away from being aggressive in your follow-up.

If your pitch is both interesting and relevant to the particular publication that you’re pitching to, be brave and make a phone call to the editors. If this does not work out, tap into social networks and create a great rapport with the editors over LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. This being done, you can finish off with sending some gentle reminders to the editors via email with the distance between the emails being about one week apart. If none of the above workouts, you should then take the assumption that your pitch was great but surplus to the requirements of those editors. These are merely normal challenges, and they should not hinder you from picking yourself up and beginning to look for new editors for your travel writing. Just never at any point give up your pursuit of breaking into travel writing!

Conclusion

Achieving success in the travel writing sector is highly dependent on the smart strategies that you lay. These strategies should also be in tandem with your passion to keep improving your travel writing skills on a daily basis. It is not as complicated as most people tend to think, but it does require a lot of time and seriousness if you would want to break out as a travel writer.

The tips above have given the best template with which you can use to work your way to the top of the pecking order in the travel writing industry. We hope that this article has been of utmost help to you. Which of the tips above are you willing to give a try?