Gerry O’Shea’s writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, National Geographic Traveler, Men’s Journal, AFAR, Hemispheres, Roads & Kingdoms, and several other publications. He has surfed and cycled six continents, climbed mountains in East Africa, and fallen down hills in Laos. He once slept through an Indonesian earthquake and twice has been robbed by a macaque monkey (the same one). Many of these adventures—the good, bad, and embarrassing—are documented in his travel journal, Beyond42North. A dual citizen of Ireland and the United States, Gerry is currently writing a book about his experiences living in the west of Ireland.
How did you get started traveling?
My first travel-related memory is sitting in traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike, crammed between my siblings in the back seat of our parent’s 1977 Chevy Suburban. I have a huge extended family on my mom’s side, and every summer a swarm of us would take over a motel at the shore for a week-long reunion. I would spend most of the four-hour drive from our Northern Virginia home bickering with my sister or pushing my brother’s sweaty knee away from mine, but occasionally we’d stop fighting to play “I Spy” or the license-plate game. Looking back, it’s clear why my parents only did this once a year.
Later, when I was in high school, my father took me and my younger brothers to visit family in Ireland. Even with our familial connection, everything on that trip seemed so foreign to me. It was my first experience outside the US and so the littlest things made big impressions. Potato chips are crisps? A car trunk is a boot? That’s crazy! The highlight for me was seeing the remains of the modest stone cottage where my grandmother was raised with her 12 siblings, an experience that gave me a much deeper appreciation for my grandparents’ decision to emigrate.
Even before the jet lag from that trip had faded, I was scheming to get back to Ireland. A few years later, I convinced a good friend to move there with me, despite the fact we had no place to live or jobs arranged. That experience living abroad, which culminated in a three-week hitchhiking escapade around the country, sparked a travel obsession I haven’t been able to shake.
How did you get started writing?
I was fortunate to grow up surrounded by books. My parents were both avid readers and always had a stack of novels or biographies on their nightstands. My father was never shy about his preference for how I spend my free time, and whenever he saw me lazily plopped in front of the TV he’d shout from the kitchen “Go read a book!”
Not much about school excited me, but I do remember feeling differently about writing assignments. Writing papers never felt like homework in the way math or science assignments did, and positive feedback from teachers helped boost my confidence. In college, I was quick to volunteer to write the paper in any sort of group work, although this was mostly to avoid learning Excel. Nearly every job transition in my 20s was spurred by a desire to write more, but it wasn’t until I was well into my 30s that I realized all of this and started to think of writing as something I could do professionally.
What do you consider your first “break” as a writer?
One of my first story assignments was for an airline magazine which—somewhat ironically—was to write about the Boston neighborhood where I lived. I’m pretty sure writing about my own neighborhood is the exact opposite of travel writing, but it was still exciting to think about thousands of airline passengers reading something I wrote (and, of course, thousands more tearing the page out to discard their gum).
Probably the most excited I’ve been about a published story was when the Los Angeles Times ran a story of mine about an experience in Vietnam that was close to my heart. When I saw that piece in the newspaper, I felt like a real writer…at least for a fleeting moment.
As a traveler and fact/story gatherer, what is your biggest challenge on the road?
I’m definitely an introvert by nature, so approaching strangers during the fact-gathering process can often be anxiety-inducing, especially when there are language barriers.
What is your biggest challenge in the research and writing process?
The start. I’m always surprised how hard it is to get those first words on the page. I’m good at justifying my procrastination by telling myself I’m waiting for the perfect opening or closing line, but eventually I realize that if I just sit and type words onto the screen a story will start to take shape.
Focus is the other major challenge with my writing process. My short attention span doesn’t allow me to work with any sort of distractions, so when I write I use noise-canceling headphones and stream instrumental music of some sort (lyrics would be distracting of course!). One trick I’ve found to help my concentration is listening to video game soundtracks. Because these soundtracks are composed with the goal of turning children into zombies, they are also effective at keeping adults in a trance-like state. I haven’t actually played a video game since the Nintendo 64 was released, but I’ve done some of my most productive writing listening to the soundtracks from World of Warcraft and Halo.
What is your biggest challenge from a business standpoint?
The consistency needed to make writing a viable career can be daunting at times. It’s hard to take a break from pursuing new stories and pitching editors without also being nervous about how it may impact my future income. I’ve found it useful to think of myself as more of a small business owner than a freelance writer. In other words, I try to make decisions about my creative work today that will ensure I have revenue coming in three or six months down the road. Framing my work this way has helped me make choices aimed at the ultimate goal of sustaining a livelihood from writing.
Have you ever done other work to make ends meet?
I supplement my income by writing for a variety of start-up businesses as well as larger, more established firms. The work is not too dissimilar from what I was doing before becoming a full-time writer, so it has been nice to leverage my background to support my travel writing. I also think that working with businesses has helped certain aspects of my travel writing. Most of the corporate clients I’ve worked with are unforgiving of missed deadlines or poor communication, so even with all the variables that come with travel writing, I try to treat editors in the same way I treat a business executive. To me, this means being obsessive about making deadlines and submitting clean copy.
What travel authors or books might you recommend and/or have influenced you?
I like pretty much everything Tim Cahill has written. Whenever I read one of his travel or adventure stories I feel like I should be sitting around a campfire in some remote location. He’s so good at giving the natural world a sense of place, and he does it in such a fun way. I’ve always loved Bill Bryson’s ability to combine education and entertainment in his books. In a Sunburned Country is probably my favorite. I really like reading Paul Theroux and Pico Iyer because their writing just feels like it’s on another level. Phil Cousineau is another writer I really admire. He’s been a tremendous help with my writing and his book The Art of Pilgrimage is a must-read for those interested in journeys of any kind.
Andrew Pham’s Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam is one of my favorite travel books, even though it’s more memoir. Pham is a masterful storyteller who weaves together adventure, humor, and tragedy in a way that made a huge impression on me. I just finished The Outrun by Amy Liptrot, which is another memoir I think of as a travel story. Her descriptions of the Orkney landscape are so vivid that I spent hours Googling images of those islands after I put the book down.
What advice and/or warnings would you give to someone who is considering going into travel writing?
Write every day. Pitch consistently. Seek feedback.
I certainly don’t have a perfect record in following this advice, but I do everything I can to avoid prolonged periods when I’m not writing or pitching stories. In my experience, long breaks only make it more difficult to find the energy to start again. I’ve found a direct correlation between the amount of time since I last sat down to write and the number of excuses I find to not write, so consistency is something I try to keep front of mind. Asking for feedback on my writing, either from editors or friends, has also been so important to my process. I hesitated for a while to pay for professional editing on some of my writing projects, but I’ve found the benefits far outweigh the costs, especially if you find an editor that genuinely believes in your project. That is so important.
I also think it’s important to treat writing time as sacred time, but not because turning off my phone and putting on noise-canceling headphones will lead to some sort of divine intervention (although that would be nice, Universe). Rather, I’ve found that regularly giving my writing the highest priority serves as a constant reminder that I’ve chosen to pursue this path because it is extremely important to me. Unfortunately, my one-year-old son has little interest in my “writing time is sacred time” philosophy.
What is the biggest reward of life as a travel writer?
Travel writing has given me the opportunity to connect with so many different people, but it also has served as a reminder of how similar we all are, regardless of birthplace or life experiences. I think writing about travel has made me more empathetic and given me a greater appreciation for the human condition. It’s also nice to daydream about new destinations and consider that work!
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