1. Never open a book with weather. If it’s only to create atmosphere, and not a character’s reaction to the weather, you don’t want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways than an…
1) Confessing and confiding are overlapping concepts Confessing and confiding are overlapping concepts, like envy and jealousy, often used interchangeably, but distinct at their cores. The fundamental difference between them is that a confession, in the word’s historical, nonliterary sense, is addressed to some entity—God, the court, the public, a person one has wronged. That…
The following Q&A about the writing life was conducted for a class project by a writing student named Josh Hammingh, who attended my undergrad alma mater in Oregon. What degree(s) do you have, and what was your major? I got a Bachelor of Arts in Writing/Literature from George Fox in 1993. Much later, after I’d…
This month marks the 25th anniversary of my travel writer interview series at RolfPotts.com. Indeed, I’ve been interviewing one travel writer a month since November 2000, which means I’ve now featured upwards 300 travel writers, from A-list icons like Simon Winchester and Pico Iyer and Pam Houston, to up-and-coming travel bloggers and new-media creators. This…
1) The better the villain, the better the hero The better the villain, the better the hero. The better the villain, the better the plot, because the villain is the one who’s usually driving the plot. I was very, very, very lucky to inherit [Hannibal Lecter]. I could not invent him to save my life.…
1) If a phrase comes to you easily, look at it with deep suspicion If a phrase comes to you easily, look at it with deep suspicion — it’s probably one of the innumerable clichés which have woven their way so tightly into the fabric of travel writing that it takes a special effort not…
1) “Don’t create things to make money; make money so you can create things. The reward for good work is more work.” 2) “99% of success is just showing up. In fact, most success is just persistence.” 3) ‘You don’t need more time because you already have all the time you will ever get; you…
Pilgrims in a Sliding World, my first attempt at writing a travel book, was (and will always remain) never completed. Though I’d set out to write the account of an eight-month van journey that had meandered its way through 37 states, I gave up on the book a little over halfway – describing just four-and-a-half…
For all of the shortcomings I’ve identified in Pilgrims in a Sliding World (my never-published first attempt at writing a travel book), it’s worth pointing out that it contained some of the earliest seeds of what later did become my first book, Vagabonding. At a certain level that makes perfect sense, as Pilgrims in a…
In re-reading Pilgrims in a Sliding World (my never-published first attempt at a travel book), I’m often struck by how young the narrator seems. This makes perfect sense, of course, since the book evokes a 24-year-old version of me trying to narrate the exploits of a 23-year-old version of me. Admittedly, I didn’t feel all…
Though travel writing is sometimes viewed as its own, self-contained genre, its core task can pertain to all manner of prose writing, since any good narrative (fiction or nonfiction) needs to establish an effective sense of place. Place is, in effect, a character in any story, so it’s good for writers to know how to…
