C.L. Stambush is the author of Untethered: A Woman’s Search for Self on the Edge of India—A Travel Memoir. She lived in Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia for six years, traveling by foot, train, truck, bus, boat, camel, donkey cart, and motorcycle. After returning to the United States, she was recruited to become a national motorcycle safety instructor where she trained hundreds of people (many of them women) to ride safely during her fourteen-year tenure. Her work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Cosmopolitan, Far Eastern Economic Review, Travelers’ Tales, as well as national and international newspapers.
How did you get started traveling?
I was working in corporate America’s pharmaceutical industry as a proofreader when the company announced it was relocating from the Midwest to the East Coast. I was excited by the prospect of getting out of my dull hometown to live in the shadow of vibrant New York City, until I fully considered the offer. I realized I would not be “moving up” but stagnating. Still, I went to sleep that night knowing I would take the offer, but woke the next morning wanting to quit and travel abroad. Until that moment, I had never wanted to travel abroad, but I define the overwhelming notion as if the hand of God were pushing me. I simply had no choice. I sold all my belongings and bought a one-way ticket to Europe. I planned to travel abroad for six months, but it was six years before I came back to the United States to live. During that time I lived, worked, and traveled through 14 countries in the Middle East, Europe, Eastern Europe, and Asia.
How did you get started writing?
I was born into a family of storytellers so becoming a writer was a natural progression for me. I wrote and illustrated my first book when I was five years old, it had a plot but no narrative arc. I earned my first writing degree in journalism and then an MFA in creative nonfiction writing.
What do you consider your first “break” as a writer?
Writing for the Indiana Daily Student newspaper at Indiana University’s former Ernie Pyle School of Journalism. That experience immersed me in the world of finding story, talking with/interviewing people, telling their stories, understanding how to shape story, and doing so in a way that connected meaningfully to a broad and diverse audience.
As a traveler and fact/story gatherer, what is your biggest challenge on the road?
I am an introvert, so interacting and engaging with too many people can be exhausting. I need alone time to recharge myself and embrace the next day’s explorations and interactions. I really enjoy people and learning from them, but it can leave me feeling too mentally fatigued to take good notes while the experience is fresh.
What is your biggest challenge in the research and writing process?
I write long-form narratives that involve a lot of research, which I love doing but I can overwhelm myself with the amount I gather. This then opens up many potential ports of entry and angles for the story. Even though it is long-form, I cannot include everything, so the second challenge I face is figuring out the story I want to tell, discovering where the story should start, and knowing out what to include and leave out. Once I lay the foundation of my work, understanding the framework and components of it, composing is much easier.
What is your biggest challenge from a business standpoint?
I can write and story tell with ease, after 40 years of daily practice, but marketing my book, generating awareness of it, and selling it is a steep learning curve for me. Riding a motorcycle solo around the edge of India was easy compared to navigating marketing and selling.
Have you ever done other work to make ends meet?
I have been a professional writer most of my life, but I do not write about travel exclusively. While abroad, I worked as a feature writer and copy editor for the Prague Post in Prague, Czech Republic, and editor for the wire service Women’s Feature Service in New Delhi, India. I was a stringer for the Houston Chronicle in India briefly too. To stretch my money when work as a writer wasn’t available, early on in my travels, I cleaned rooms in a hostel in Greece—for a hot minute!
What travel authors or books might you recommend and/or have influenced you?
I read all forms of nonfiction and mostly mysteries in fiction. No matter the book, I learn something from every book that improves my writing, my storytelling, or understanding of humanity. But there are two women’s travel memoirs that impacted and influenced me when writing my travel memoir Untethered. Cheryl Strayed’s Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail because it provided a structure I really identified with when seeking a way to tell my story. Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia was influential because it was a woman alone in foreign lands.
What advice and/or warnings would you give to someone who is considering going into travel writing?
I think the hardest thing for anyone looking to start something new in life is taking that leap of faith. If you are passionate and drive to do it, you must be strong enough to silence the voices of those around you saying, “you shouldn’t” as well as the doubting voice inside yourself preventing you from trying. There is no reward without risk. My life has not turned out the way I or others expected, but I would not change any of it.
What is the biggest reward of life as a travel writer?
The privilege of being a guest in any country or culture is the best reward. People all over the world have been so warm and welcoming. As a woman alone, I found more doors, homes, and people opened up to me than when I traveled with others—even one other woman. As my father said to me when I was a self-doubting teenager, “You can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone you want.”
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