Craft

How to Write a Great Opening

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Openings make or break your travel memoir story. The reader wants to know they are in good hands—that the story will be personal, and yet relatable, that it will be specific to the author, but also reveal something universal about the human condition. Quite a tall order for an opening paragraph! Luckily, all of this […]

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How to Imagine Your Reader

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I spend a lot of time writing about how the reader will react to your writing. It sounds as though I believe I can speak for all readers, but of course readers are individual, subjective creatures. How can I know their responses so confidently? When I mention ‘the reader’, I’m not talking about my individual […]

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How to Set Your Travel Memoir Writing Goals for the New Year

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2019 is your year of travel writing! As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said, “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it; Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” Once you begin writing, you gain momentum, as well as power and magic, as Goethe tells us. Don’t get in the way of […]

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How to Write a Great Travel Memoir Blog Post

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Do you have a travel blog or plan on starting one? Do you ever fall into the trap of simply reporting what happened (“Then I did this … Then we went there …”) instead of telling a compelling story? Here are my 10 tips for writing a great travel blog post: Start in the middle […]

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21 Travel Memoir Writing Prompts

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Looking for some inspiration for your travel memoir writing? Look no further–I have 21 prompts right here! All 21 probably won’t apply to you, but I hope many of them will, and that you give some of them a try. See what resonates with you, set a timer for 25 minutes, and see where your […]

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How to Write About the Street Where You Live

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I was asked by a wonderful travel journal, Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel, to pitch an idea for their Streetview section, where writers compose travel essays about the street where they live. I put together a pitch and was accepted. Then it was time to get to work. I didn’t focus on the history […]

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How to Write a List Essay

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If you’re feeling stuck with your travel memoir writing, an interesting and playful structure to try is to tell your story in the form of a how-to list. This structure is like an instruction manual, but humorously reframes each step as part of your story. Some example titles might be: How to Not Get Deported […]

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