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Jan 3, 2023Liked by Lottie Gross, Steph Dyson

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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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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When I spent my childhood dreaming of becoming I writer I never thought to include receipts, tax returns, and accountancy skills in my imaginings! Reality is such an admin-heavy comedown. :(

Congrats on making it through what sounds like a ghastly year. Sounds to me like you've got a great attitude on financial profit AND personal/psychological profit needing to balance. We can't win all the time, but we can keep on keeping on, and sometimes we need to do stupid financial things to keep our emotional head above water.

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We're very fortunate that we're able to tailor travel writing to wherever we are going and write about what we find there for our Substack. That way we're incurring almost no travel expenses other than what we'd be incurring anyway.

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I'm new to your newsletter but love it so far, especially as I'm just dipping my toe into the world of travel writing! Thank you!

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