52PerfectDays.com's 3rd Annual Travel Writing Contest...

52 Perfect Days has launched their 3rd Annual Travel Writing Contest.

This year's theme is National Parks.

Submissions should be 1000 words focusing on a National Park, National Monument, National Seashore or Historic Parks in the United State or Canada, highlighting how to spend a perfect day there.

Head over to 52 Perfect Days for full submission guidelines

Deadline is 31st October 2010

First Prize is a trip to Oahu, 2nd Prize 2 Nights in Palm Springs, 3rd Prize a Wordpress Website, and 4th Prize a Tom Bihn Travel Bag. And 10 runner up prizes of a a copy of Best Travel Writing "True Stories from Around the World".

Lonely Planet looking for amazing food stories for new anthology...

Ask any travel writer about their favorite travel memories and you can just about guarantee that food will be involved.

In fact, according to Lonely Planet author and editor Don George, ‘every traveller has some unforgettable food story – a larger-than-life feast, a mind-bending immersion in a rural market, the homemade, heart-opening treat shared by a stranger on a claptrap train, an adventure on the trail of an edible exotic. In all these tales, food is an agent of transformation, taking travellers to a deeper and more lasting understanding of and connection with a people, a place and a culture. And if they’re really lucky, it tastes good too!’

With that in mind, Lonely Planet is looking for submissions for the upcoming anthology, A Moveable Feast: Life-Changing Food Encounters Around the World.

All you need is a (true) tale of travel and food. He's looking for original, unpublished pieces of exceptionally high literary quality.

Length is from 1,000 to 3,000 words. Deadline is April 19.

If you have a great food story to tell, email it to Don at don.george@sbcglobal.net with Food Anthology in the subject line. All submissions are on speculation.

A Moveable Feast will be published this fall.

Grantourismo to run monthly travel writing competitions...

Sounds like this might the first of many such travel blogging competitions offered by the newly created Grantourismo travel blog. Grantourismo is the brainchild of travel writers Lara Dunston and Terence Carter who are being sponsored by HomeAway Holiday Rentals to do a 'contemporary Grand Tour' around Europe.

The theme for this first travel blogging competition is The ’Hood.

All you need to do is write a 500 word word blog post that motivates people to:

-explore more authentic and enriching ways to travel
-get beneath sthe skin of a place when they travel
-learn to live like locals
-travel more slowly and more sustainably, and/or
-give something back to the places they visit.


Prizes are:

FIRST PRIZE A stay at a HomeAway Holiday-Rentals property of your choice anywhere in the world valued at UK£500 (US$750) and a Viator tour voucher worth £100/US$150

SECOND PRIZE A Context tour voucher worth US$100

THIRD PRIZE an annual subscription to AFAR magazine

PHOTOGRAPHY PRIZE* Olympus FE 4040 cameras worth UK£160/US$240

Deadline: 28 March

For further instructions and terms and conditions, visit the Grantourismo Travel Blogging Competition: March page

BootsnAll Launches New Travel Writer Platform...

Keen to create partnerships with passionate travel writers to create expert-driven content on their favorite destinations and topics, BootsnAll is in the process of launching their new Travel Writer platform

Currently, they are looking for writers for the following:

* Destinations: Amsterdam, Australia, France, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Las Vegas, London, Mexico, South Africa, or you tell us!

* Themes: Adventure Travel, Business Travel, Round the World Travel, TEFL, Travel Gear or you tell us!

Here's how It Works:

* You get to focus on your passion — travel writing; BootsnAll covers the technical aspects.
* Weekly tasks: feature article writing, blog posts and social media interaction
* Time commitment: up to 10 hours/week
* Compensation: base pay of $100-500/month with profit sharing of 30-40%. The base pay is based on how much content is produced. Some destinations will require more content than others….that’s why the variance in base compensation.
* The “fine print”: Just like a guide book, your content will have a copyright and non-compete, but unlike traditional guide books, BootsnAll shares the profit (up to 40%) with each writer!
* If you love independent travel, fancy yourself to be an expert, and want to get paid to write about a destination you love, fill out the BootsnAll Travel Writer Platform application by Monday, March 15, 2010.

For more information and to apply, head over to http://writers.bootsnall.com/platform

Sounds interesting...

Video: Travel Blogger Sherry Ott Talks to Dispatches 2.0...

Need some inspiration?

Look no further than Sherry Ott, who left the corporate world, took off around the world, and created the popular travel blog ottsworld.com

Weekly Top 5 Blog Posts for Writers...

1. 7 Tips for Pitch Sessions with Editors and Agents

2. The Freelancer's Bill of Rights

3. 5 Ways a Blog Can Boast Your Freelance Business

4. 5 Tools for the Frugal Freelancer

5. The Scoop on Writing Profile Articles: Preparing for the Interview

plus...

6. 6 Steps to Effective Notes

7. A Guide to Beating the Fears That Are Holding You Back

8. The Solar Powered Traveler

Travel Writing Miscellanea...

As travel writers, we need to be able to take a good photo. But if you're really good at photography, it could easily become a separate income stream. Find out how Online photo services can give shutterbug lucrative outlet.

The Vancouver Sun talks with Rick Steves.

In honor of Woman's History Month, World Hum writes about Six Great Women Travelers in Asia.

Bookride reviews a classic - The Road to Oxiana

Intelligent Travel offers the inside scoop on bookstores in Berlin.

Guest Post: Travel Writing Tips by Sybil Baker

Write to Travel is the latest stop in Sybil Baker's Blog Tour with WOW (Women on Writing). Sybil Baker, a lifelong traveler, has combined her love of travel and her interest in the allure and alienation of American travelers and expatriates into contemporary Women's Fiction/Chick-Lit novel that asks 'What would you do if your carefully planned life was falling apart?'.

Entitled The Life Plan, it carries the lead character around the world, from the offices of Washington,DC, to the gritty streets of Bangkok and the mountain region of Chiang Mai. You can read the first chapter of The Life Plan here.

During her blog tour to promote her book, Sybil has been stopping off at various writer's blogs and providing interesting guest posts. Earlier in the week she was over at The Urban Muse discussing 'steps to organizing your writing time' and at bleeding expresso analysing 'the Expatriate Writer in the Post Millennium'.

Today, at Write to Travel, Sybil offers some Travel Writing Tips.

I don’t consider myself a travel writer, but I am a person who loves to travel and often writes about the places I’ve traveled to. What’s the difference? For me, a travel writer is someone who writes about a place as information for other tourists, while my writing is not about which restaurant to eat at or hotel to stay in, but rather about the mark a place has left on me. For my essays, I use travel as a way for me to think about my own preconceived notions about myself or other cultures. For my fiction, the places I’ve visited often serve as settings that compete with or intensify the conflicts within the main character.

In that sense, I recommend writing about travel as way to expand your personal and artistic comfort zones. Travel allows you to see the world and your writing in a different way. For writers who would like to try out travel writing, whether as essays, articles, or fiction, I have a few tips to get started.

1. Expand your definition of travel. You don’t have to travel to the other side of the world to use travel in your writing. Find the out-of-the way places in your own town, go to neighborhoods that are in a different economic condition than your own, attend a meeting or gathering that you normally wouldn’t. If you can go somewhere that is new and different to you, you’ll be able to observe the setting, people, and interactions with a fresh perspective.

2. Start small. I did not even have a passport until I was thirty, partly because I was intimidated by going even to Europe, although I dreamed of traveling. My first trip abroad was for a week in Paris and Barcelona, and I remember thinking that even though I didn’t know the languages well, traveling was not as hard as I thought it would be. A year later, I’d moved to South Korea and from there got the courage to go to Japan for a long weekend. After I survived that, I went to Thailand, and from there Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. By the time I’d made it to Indonesia a few years later, I’d learned that traveling to most places, while challenging, is doable with a little planning and patience.

3. Travel cheap. If you stay at the Hyatt, eat at tourist restaurants, and take only packaged tours, you’ll be trapped in a tourist bubble that excludes you from the local culture. By eating at local restaurants, exploring neighborhoods on your own, and staying at hostels, guesthouses, and B&Bs, you’ll not only save money, but you’ll interact more with the locals and learn more about their culture. Decide what amenities you must have, but be willing to give up some comforts of home and embrace the local lifestyle.

4. Don’t try to do everything. Sometimes slowing down your pace and being open to the moment is the best way to enjoy travel and allow the best experiences to happen. You won’t be able to see every museum, church, or ruin, so try to make your travels one of quality rather than quantity.

5. Make sure you take time to write down your thoughts, feelings, impressions, and descriptions of the places you go. It’s easy to think you’ll remember everything, but when you get back home, you’ll be surprised at how many details you’ve forgotten. Don’t worry though about writing your essay or short story while traveling—sometimes you need time to absorb and digest all that you’ve experienced before you can write about.


6. Don’t write about experiences that millions of tourists before you have had and expect readers to care. Even though Venice may have been the most life changing travel experience for you, unless you have a personal story that is the main point of your essay or story and can bring a new perspective about the city, your thoughts on Venice will unfortunately probably not be of interest to most readers. If you have a story to tell that takes us on a journey off the beaten path, then we’ll be eager to read about your insights.

Remember, be adventurous and have fun! If you have other travel writing tips, I’d love to hear them.

Thanks Sybil and good luck with the blog book tour. We will be following your tour thanks to this handy events calender.

Blog Highway Twitter Transcript Available at...

Did you catch the Blog Highway seminar at twitter? If not, do not fear. The transcript remains for those of us who missed the live action to get a replay.

To read it in order, though, you have to start at the end and at the bottom of each page. Once you've finished a page, then click on newer and you'll be able to follow the whole show.

So here's the link to the live twitter sessionstarting from the beginning of the sesssion.

I'm off now to read it myself...

TED Video: NTG Editor Keith Bellows Talks About the Camel...

Keith Bellow, National Geographic Traveler Editor-in-Chief talks about the camel, who he calls 'the SUV of the desert' in this TED talk...

Authors@Google: Paul Hudson.

Paul Hudson discusses his self-published book "Prelude to Tomorrow: A Collection of Travel Stories".

Last Chance to Enter Travel Writing Contest...

I've entered the Wanderlust & Lipstick travel writing contest.

Have you?

There's only one day left(closes 31st January) for entries in one of the eight categories...

Adventure
Family Fun
Food & Drink
Local Culture
Solo Travel
Spiritual
Wit & Wander
Women’s Travel

Submission guidelines here.

There's a great first prize - win a 15-day trip to the Sacred Land of the Incaswith Intrepid Journeys - as well as numerous smaller prizes all worth winner.

Plus there's a chance that your entry might be included in a book anthology of travel writing. Those chosen will be paid $50 and have a byline in a travel book.

So why not give it a go...

Video: Don George Talks About Good Travel Writing...

A National Geographic Traveler interview with Don George, NGT's online Trip Lit editor...

Travel Writing Miscellanea...

Roff Potts was interviewed by the San Jose Mercury News. And for more on Roff, check out 2008: The year in Rolf over at Vagabonding.

Vogageek has an interview up with Kim Mance from TravelBlogExchange.com and Galavanting.

Almost Fearless writes about Becoming a Digital Nomad: Options for Working Remotely from Anywhere

Tips from the T List's latest 10 Questions is with Nancy D Brown from What a Trip and Uptake's Lodging Blog.

Tips from the T List also has a list of who they consider the Top 5 Independent Travel Blogs

Wanderlust and Lipstick Joins with Intrepid Travel to Sponsor Travel Writing Contest...

Here's a chance to sharpen your writing skills and maybe even win a 15 Day Trip with Intrepid to Discover the Sacred Land of the Incas. Other prizes include 5 travel bags from Timbuk2 and 3 SteriPEN Travelers, plus a chance to be published in a travel writing anthology.

All you have to do is write a travel story and impress this line up of judges...


* Nancy Brown, Travel Writer, What a Trip
* Amanda Castleman, Adventure and Travel Writer
* Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Travel Writer
* Greg Hubbs, Editor, Transitions Abroad
* Tim Leffel, Editor, Perceptive Travel
* Pam Mandel, Freelance Writer

Deadline is 31 January 2009 so you'd better get writing.

Travel Writing Miscellanea..

A Backpacker in India interviews travel writer and photographer Arun Bhat.

Frank Bures has an inteview with Rolf Potts published in the Nov/Dec issue of Poets & Writers.

Sandwagon asks Does travel writing style rule over travel writing substance?

Travel writer David Farley offers some tips on how to Travel (and get paid to do it)

Beth Whitman has a conversation with travel writer Dave Fox for seattlepi.com

New York Times has a slideshow looking at Why We Travel

Times Online lists The Best Travel Books of 2008

Authors@Google Video: Stephanie Griest

Author Stephanie Griest discusses her book "Mexican Enough: My Life between the Borderlines"...

Reviews of the Recent TravelBlog Camp...

Last week in London, two events were held that attracted the attention of travel writers and bloggers.

One was the annual World Travel Market, a four day gathering of the global travel trade industry to meet, network, negotiate, conduct business and stay abreast with the latest developments in the travel industry.

The other event, smaller and lesser known, as the inaugural TravelBlog Camp (BlogCamp08) set up by Darren of Travel Rants.

If, like me, you weren't able to attend, you can still get the feel of the event by reading these reviews...

Sandwagon - Travel Blogcamp, London 2008 - pints and pondering

Midi sur l’Asie - Travel Blog camp: When Travel meets Social Media

Mr and Mrs Smith - Travel Blog Camp 2008

Roaming Tales - Travel Blog Camp in London

A full list of reviews can be found at Travel Rant's Wrapup of the Travel BlogCamp and World Travel Market

Traveling Feet...

Foot Notes

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: design inspirational)

(source)

Book Giveaway: Lonely Planet's Volunteer, a Traveler's Guide....

Check out my book review and giveaway of Lonely Planet's book Volunteer, A Traveler's Guide to Making a Difference Around the World.



Entries close 17th October 2008...