What's in Store
Writing Down the Road
by Sandra Dark

The horrors of 9/11 dealt travel a staggering right hook to the jaw; the more recent recession has delivered a knee-buckling gut punch. But travel and travel writing will be around as long as real or vicarious wanderlust exists. From inspirational to bare-bones practical, these books might provide a whiff of restorative "Spirits of Ammonia" for struggling travel writers, as well as those interested in joining their ranks.

A Sense of Place: Great Travel Writers Talk About Their Craft, Lives, and Inspiration with Michael Shapiro. Travelers' Tales, Inc., 2004, 389 pages, paperback, $18.95.

In this fascinating collection of Q&A interviews, you will discover how the forces that shaped 18 top-drawer travel writers are as complex and textured as the places and people they write about. Some are accidental travel writers, having stumbled into the specialty through the back door. Others, such as the renowned Pico Iyer, have travel in their blood, while Isabel Allende actually dislikes traveling.

Their philosophies and approaches to travel and their craft vary widely. Some don't take notes at all, while travel-adventure writer Tim Cahill fills stacks of notebooks while on the road. Some (including interviewer Michael Shapiro) are devoted users of recorders, while others shun them. Arthur Frommer himself gives tips on how to break into the field, and describes the fascinating genesis of all those Frommer's guidebooks. Some revelations are eyebrow-raising, such as the writer who made up an entire family in one of her early travel books, and remains perfectly okay with that. (Travel writers and memoirists share common ground when it comes to blurring the lines between fact and fiction.)

From a walk in the snow with Bill Bryson (living proof that travel writers can find a home on best-seller lists) to flashbacks on Eric Newby's exploits as an escaped P.O.W. in Italy, these long-time veterans talk about their views of their—and our—world. For example, one after another credits being an "outsider" as key to providing the necessary fresh perspective on the places and people they write about. You can even learn some valuable promotional lessons from Rick Steves, who gives his popular travel programs to PBS in exchange for their promotional value.

This is a crossover book in many ways, providing a good read for any writer, whether or not travel writing is in your present or future.

The Best Travel Writing 2009, edited by James O'Reilly, Larry Habegger, and Sean O'Reilly. Travelers' Tales, Inc., 2009, 346 pages, paperback, $17.95.

The best thing about "Best of" collections is the wide array of styles and viewpoints they offer; this latest compilation from Travelers' Tales is no exception. Essays and book excerpts explore everything from the deadly invasion of a school in small-town Colorado, to a hunt for Papa Hemingway's ghost in Cuba, to quiet desperation against a backdrop of the sex trade in Amsterdam.

Some revelations tend toward the raw, occasionally taking you deeper into the writer's mind than you might care to go. But even those give you a taste of just how personalized and inwardly-focused travel writing can be. If you have a taste for exotic places, you'll get tense drama with Michael McCarthy's The Floating Coffin of Tonle Sap Lake. And the David Torrey Peters essay, The Bamenda Syndrome, set in Cameroon, delves into whether insanity is just a point of view.

Writing styles range from crystalline prose to almost poetically obscure, and there is plenty in between. After a look at Stalin's death mask, and a near-death experience off the coast of Panama, Jill Paris provided me with a much-needed change of pace by taking me Shopping for Dirndls. Some of these samples test the boundaries of travel writing, reaching well beyond conventional travelogues in search of broader scope and deeper meanings.

Lonely Planet's Guide to Travel Writing, by Don George. Lonely Planet, 2009 (2nd Edition), 304 pages, paperback, $19.99.

Like a piece of luggage packed by a veteran world traveler, Travel Writing almost bulges with no-frills, nuts-and-bolts information. George begins the three-part book by showing how to structure and craft good travel articles, including the use of ledes, endings, characters, and dialogue. At the end of this section, he includes a variety of complete travel articles, including sidebars, showing different types of approaches. These are followed by interviews with fourteen leading travel writers.

The middle section deals with the professional side of this specialty, including breaking into the field, "tools of the trade," contracts, and the other basics of establishing and operating a travel-writing business. George wraps up this section by interviewing a dozen editors and agents on aspects of establishing a travel-writing career.

The final section contains almost 50 pages of travel-related resources. Besides market listings, you will find everything from embassy listings to statistics, plus a list of suggested reading and a sample model's release. While listed resources are for just the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, the guidelines can serve as a base for planning working trips anywhere in the world. For new travel writers, this book is well worth its price.

Sandra Dark is currently working on a nonfiction book with her co-author, landscape architect and Emmy nominee Dean Hill.