Discover more from Talking Travel Writing
We're commissioning | Travel writing course
Have you written a travel book? We want to commission you!
While Shivani and Meera are readying next week’s newsletter for you all as part of our Unpacking Media Bias takeover, we’ve got a couple of exciting opportunities…
Online travel writing course
Lottie is running her online travel writing course with Journalism.co.uk for the third time this year. It’s ideal for anyone looking to break into travel writing, understand the industry better, and learn how to pitch and write great travel features. The course has a self-study element, but weekly video calls offer an opportunity to ask questions and get more context directly from Lottie, and she’ll critique your pitches and writing through short, easy assignments throughout the course.
Previous participants have landed commissions with National Geographic Traveller, loveEXPLORING.com and The Telegraph. Here’s what they had to say:
As someone without a journalism background, I found the course hugely helpful in demystifying the industry and learning how to start thinking like a freelance writer. The course content was detailed, well structured, and very accessible. They complemented the weekly calls very well, and I'm sure I'll be referring to them over the next few months!
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Lottie's 'Breaking into travel writing course' is the perfect overview to the field of travel writing for anyone interested in starting their own freelance career. Informative and practical, her lessons lay out both the glamorous and not-so-glam sides to travel – from sending pitches to rejections, from landing press trips to what it's like when you're spending long days on the road and filing copy from your hotel bed. This is the only travel writing course I've ever taken that's given a full picture of what it's really like to be a travel writer.
Interested? The course is £280 plus VAT (so £336 total). Book it below:
Commission opportunity from TTW
Written a travel book that’s not a guidebook? We want to hear from you! In December, we’re running a series all about the non-guidebook travel book world. That could mean travel-based memoirs, travelogues or non-fiction books about specific destinations or themes within the travel sphere.
For the first email in the series — the op-ed piece we usually run above our “Who to follow” and “Tweet of the week” sections — we want to commission a writer who has experience of writing a travel book. We don’t just want a blow-by-blow account of your experience of writing a book, though. It needs to have an angle. It must be a statement-making piece, which like a travel story, has a beginning, middle and end. Perhaps you wrote a travel book but swear you’ll never do it again? Or maybe writing a travel book launched your career? Did getting published lead to unexpected things for you as a writer? Or did it make you rich or poor? These are all angles we’d love to hear thoughts on, but your piece must also offer an interesting and, most importantly, useful insight into the world of travel book publishing.
Got an idea? Email hello@travelwriting.xyz with the subject line “PITCH FOR DECEMBER” by 22 October 2021. Pitches should be no more than 75 words and you must include a suggested headline (make it snappy, please!) and a little background on your published work.
The important bits: we are funding this from our own pockets so the budget isn’t huge — we can pay £100 for a 500-800 word op-ed. We will, of course, link out to your website/portfolio and include links to buy your book. If commissioned, we’ll need your copy by 15 November 2021.
Meera and Shivani will be back with our Unpacking Media Bias takeover on Tuesday, talking to two editors about their thoughts on representation and bias in travel media.