Today we are talking with British travel writer Keith Kellet who writes primarily for the internet. He is the Lenscape editor at Just Say Go and UK correspondent at GlobalFoodie. His articles can be found at various websites including France for Freebooters, Time-Travel Britain, Live Life Travel, and Nature of Animals. He also maintains the Travelrat's Travels blog.Hi Keith and thanks for stopping by for a few questions.
Did you always want to be a writer? How did you get started in writing?
When I was at school, I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to join the Air Force, or be a journalist. The careers master said I must make my mind up: I couldn’t be both! Unfortunately, he’s not with us any more, because I’d love to go up to him with my discharge papers and valedictory letter in one hand, and my journalism diploma and some clips in the other, and say ‘Nyaaah!’
One day, in the Mess bar, I was talking to the Education Officer who was also editor of the Station Magazine. I’m afraid I told her what I thought of her production, and she said she could only work with the stuff she received. And, if I could produce a phrase like ‘self-congratulatory, inward-looking, parochial pap’ while on the outside of half a gallon of best bitter, I should be able to produce a halfway decent article. When could she expect my first contribution?
What do you consider your first "break" as a travel writer?
I didn’t really have one. I started doing camping, hiking and outdoor stuff to subsidise these hobbies, and sort of drifted from there through history, nature, food and drink and local issues into travel.
What advice would you give to someone who is considering going into travel writing? Any tips to breaking into newspapers and magazines?
Don’t be in too much of a hurry to give up the ‘day job’. Try to diversify. Travel is a pretty narrow field, and there’s a lot of competition to get into it. In fact, if you can write in some other field as well, so much the better. As to breaking into magazines, best advice I can give is read all of them you can get your hands on, and try to work out what they’re not covering, what they need and if there’s maybe a place for your material. As we used to say in Westmorland ‘It costs nowt to ask!’.
And, if you can work out how to break into newspapers … please tell me!
What do you see as the future for travel writers in the printed media and online ?
It sounds like pie in the sky, but I foresee an increase in anecdotal, rather than informational travel writing in print, rather like writers such as Lawrence Durrell and Patrick Leigh Fermor used to produce. You see, guide books are out of date almost as soon as they’ve hit the streets. To a lesser extent, magazine articles which say ‘You should go to … ‘ rather than ‘We went to …’ tend to age somewhat, too.
You can get far fresher information from the Web. But, there’s a place for the more anecdotal kind of writing there, too.
As a writer and traveler, what are the biggest challenges you face on the road ?
Fitting into an economy-class airline seat!
Finally, what is your favorite place and why ?
Jordan! There’s so much to see, and everyone is so friendly and helpful … only an over-importunate baggage porter at Amman airport spoilt a 100% record!
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Previous interviews:
Nicole Cotroneo
Barbara Sjoholm
Mike Gerrard
Heather Hapeta
Thomas Swick
Leif Pettersen
Rolf Potts
Ian Mackenzie
Sheila Scarborough
Graham Reid
Candy Harrington
Terah Shelton
Rudy Maxa
Shannon Hurst Lane
Wendy Perrin
David Whitley
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