Jayme Moye is the North American Travel Journalist Association’s 2018 Grand Prize awardee in Travel Journalism. She is the first woman to achieve that honor more than once, having also been the Grand Prize awardee in 2014. Her writing appears in National Geographic, Travel + Leisure, Outside, New York, and Marie Claire, among others. Her travel narratives have been anthologized in The Best Women’s Travel Writing and Vignettes and Postcards from Paris. She is a former adventure news correspondent for Men’s Journal, and the former managing editor of Elevation Outdoors.
How did you get started traveling?
I grew up in Ohio, and besides traveling once with my parents to see family in Washington, D.C., I’d never been anywhere. As a high school student interested in marine biology, I was selected to participate in a program through International Field Studies, Inc. held over spring break on the eastern shore of Andros Island in the Bahamas. That trip blew my narrow little world wide open, and I’ve been drawn to foreign places, especially where exploration and adventure are involved, ever since.
How did you get started writing?
I don’t remember not writing. I have journals dating back to elementary school. I had my first letter-to-the-editor published at age 10. In middle school, I self-published 11 issues of a neighborhood magazine called The Cat’s Meow. In eighth grade, I was editor of the school newspaper. In high school, I wrote for the school literary journal. I didn’t pursue writing, academically speaking, in college because I didn’t see it as a viable career path to pay off my student loans and become financially independent from my parents. My world was still rather narrow at that point—I got good grades so I needed to become a doctor or a lawyer or a CEO, right?
What do you consider your first “break” as a writer?
I’d been working in the technology sector since graduating college, most recently as a Program Manager at Oracle, and while it paid the bills, it didn’t hold my attention. Instead, I poured my passion into my hobbies, which were endurance sports. In 2007, I focused on road-bike racing, and was captain of the top-ranked amateur women’s team in the state. I would write long, humorous, narrative-style reports after each race. The team loved them and would share them with friends and family. Meanwhile, the all-male staff at VeloNews, a cycling journal based out of Boulder, Colorado, where I was living at the time, was desperate for a female writer to do some reporting on women’s specific bikes. My name came up, and I took on a few assignments for them. Seeing my byline for the first time as an adult, and receiving a paycheck for my writing was thrilling. I spent the next year moonlighting as a freelance magazine writer, and in January 2009, left Oracle to do it full time.
As a traveler and fact/story gatherer, what is your biggest challenge on the road?
My biggest challenge on the road is myself. Despite how much I value, and am drawn to, travel, I’m not a natural at it. I’m not a morning person, I tend toward motion sickness, I get psycho-glycemic or hangry or whatever you want to call it when I go too long without eating, and I’m an introvert. One time in Kathmandu, Nepal, where I was on assignment embedded with a small tour group, one of the other women finally blurted out, “How on earth are you a travel writer?” I need a lot of space and downtime when I travel. And that’s usually not an option.
What is your biggest challenge in the research and writing process?
The first is confidence. The more I care about a story, and the bigger the outlet that’s publishing it, the more I’m paralyzed by thoughts of not being good enough to execute it. I procrastinate until I’m panicked and then go into a flurry of work that puts me heads-down for days. I become completely immersed, and don’t even want to leave the house to re-stock the groceries, let alone do any self-care like exercise or seeing friends or loved ones. Which leads me to my second biggest challenge: finding balance during the writing process.
What is your biggest challenge from a business standpoint?
My biggest challenge has been the fact that as my skills and experience have increased, as I’ve won writing awards and become somewhat sought-after, the pay for the type of work I do has either decreased or plateaued at the rate of $1-$2 per word. Plus, print outlets continue to fold or suffer budget and staff cuts, which means there are fewer and fewer opportunities to nab those $1-$2 per word assignments. Meanwhile, opportunities to write online content continue to expand, but the pay rate is considerably less, meaning you must produce an unsustainable amount of writing. I nearly burned out at the end of 2014, having written 142 stories that year, and close to the same in 2013.
Have you ever done other work to make ends meet?
Since my tech days, I haven’t done much else outside of writing. But it hasn’t all been consumer magazine writing. I co-wrote a book, with rock climber Hans Florine, called On the Nose: A Lifelong Obsession with Yosemite’s Most Iconic Climb. I ghost-wrote a real estate developer’s lifestyle magazine about south Denver. I’ve written travel itineraries for the Ritz-Carlton’s website, catalog copy for outdoor brands, and advertorial for outdoor magazines. I’ve also done SEO-style web writing for travel websites. I’ve taught travel writing workshops. And I recently did some of my first paid speaking gigs, one as a panelist for a travel marketing seminar, and another as a keynote speaker on the topic of sexual harassment in the outdoors industry (a topic I’ve written on extensively).
What travel authors or books might you recommend and/or have influenced you?
Pam Houston’s Cowboys Are My Weakness is one of my all-time favorites. My dad turned me onto Gary Smith’s features in Sports Illustrated, which are among some of my earliest influences. Also, Tim Cahill’s adventure travel writing in the old issues of Outside, and his many books. Today, I’ll read any magazine story by Steve Friedman or Christopher Solomon. When I’m having a confidence melt-down, I hold up Kevin Fedarko’s The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon as one of those things I’ll never be good enough to write. At the very beginning of my writing career, I read Tracy Ross’s feature in Backpacker magazine, The Source of All Things, about taking her stepfather on a hike in the Sawtooth Mountains to confront him about sexually abusing her as a child, and it made a huge impact in terms of showing me what was possible. Tracy still writes for magazines and I devour her work. She writes with so much heart.
What advice and/or warnings would you give to someone who is considering going into travel writing?
Do you write to travel or travel to write? It needs to be the latter. Writing will never settle for being a means to an end.
What is the biggest reward of life as a travel writer?
I am a compulsive writer, and travel provides a very deep well from which to draw. I feel extremely grateful to be doing exactly what I want to be doing—with my life, and with my career, which are now so tightly interwoven that I can’t imagine ever separating them out again. And I’ve met so many inspiring people—other writers and storytellers, in all stages of their careers; the adventurers and outdoor athletes and conservation scientists and explorers I’ve interviewed; the guides and tour operators and other travelers I’ve shared the trail with; the editors and artistic directors and photographers and public relations professionals who continue to color my work and my perspective—it’s all been incredibly satisfying.
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