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Lynn Houghton's avatar

So very useful. It was lovely to see you at events but I think all of us must remember to be far more careful with expenses, especially with inflation at an all time high!

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Stuart McDonald's avatar

Yeah I hear ya—doesn’t matter how hard I stuff my dosh into my wallet it flies out far easier.

As it’s all the rage to take a sustainability view of everything we do, I’ve been thinking about this a lot with regards to travel writing. Your Porto trip is a good example of one that while good fun wasn’t a great one for the bank balance—nor the planet. That sort of practice, flying to X to write Y, is very common, but environmentally is bad. Flying to X to write A,B,C,D and E though, is, you could argue, less bad for the planet (well it is just as bad, but you’re making the bad more worthwhile) and also (hopefully!) better for the bank balance.

David Whitley wrote a piece ages ago (which I can’t find, but it does exist!) about how he crams multiple stories out of a single trip—it was akin to a military expedition, but financially it made the trips much more worthwhile—and I think there is a growing awareness that everyone, not just writers, needs to make their flights count better than they perhaps used to.

Yes, “go do ten commissions rather than one” is easier said than done, but, like a lot of sustainability stuff, it pays off better than business as usual.

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