"So what do you want to be when you grow up?" Ah, the million dollar question. Hindsight is such a wonderful thing.
Chances are, what you envisaged yourself doing from when you were a child, is far from what your job now entails. For example, growing up, I really thought I would end up being a vet. If you were to mention this to my friends now, they would laugh in your face at the sheer thought of this.
I never thought in a million years, I would end up writing about travel. Let alone having anything published. But it wasn't until I returned from a trip in South America a few years back, that I thought I would try and put pen to paper. What was essentially a throw away excuse for me to relive my experiences in Peru, turned out to be a winning entry for a Lonely Planet writing competition that I entered at the end of 2007.
Chances are, what you envisaged yourself doing from when you were a child, is far from what your job now entails. For example, growing up, I really thought I would end up being a vet. If you were to mention this to my friends now, they would laugh in your face at the sheer thought of this.
I never thought in a million years, I would end up writing about travel. Let alone having anything published. But it wasn't until I returned from a trip in South America a few years back, that I thought I would try and put pen to paper. What was essentially a throw away excuse for me to relive my experiences in Peru, turned out to be a winning entry for a Lonely Planet writing competition that I entered at the end of 2007.
And then from there I guess it snowballed. I realised I actually quite liked writing, but knew I had a long way to go in terms of fine-tuning my style and adapting it to different audiences. Rather than it being "oh, this is what I did on my holidays".
Every day is still a learning curb and I am no way near in the same league as the many great travel writers who work so hard in this testing industry. And yes, 'travel writing' is not always the dream job everybody thinks it to be, even more so with publishing houses crumbling every day under the pressures of the economic melt down.
One particular person who I am indebted and forever grateful to, is the award-winning travel writer and Lonely Planet author, David Atkinson who writes an insightful blog Hit the North, and has been a fantastic mentor and a great inspiration to me. If perhaps, as a result of my constant badgering and nagging for advice. David, your efforts will be rewarded in heaven. I can assure you of this.
Over the course of the last two years, one publication that I worked with to varying degrees is the monthly UK based magazine Real Travel. I first started off with submitting selections of my travel images to their Reader's Gallery, and then from there I got the opportunity to review Tim Butcher's Blood River . And now, nearly two years on and several more book reviews and contributions later, I finally will have my first full-length feature published next month in their October issue.
The article will look at my time spent in Sumatra earlier this year. This is such a great achievement for me, even if I have to say so myself, and I am very excited.
So you can imagine how privileged I felt when Hfu Reisenhofer, Real Travel's newly appointed Chief Editor, asked me to contribute a few words towards an article he was writing about breaking into the industry, as I am a 'reader turned writer'...
If you would like to get a better insight into this and fancy reading my ''words of wisdom', then take a sneaky peak here: So you want to be a travel writer?
Hope you enjoy!
Every day is still a learning curb and I am no way near in the same league as the many great travel writers who work so hard in this testing industry. And yes, 'travel writing' is not always the dream job everybody thinks it to be, even more so with publishing houses crumbling every day under the pressures of the economic melt down.
One particular person who I am indebted and forever grateful to, is the award-winning travel writer and Lonely Planet author, David Atkinson who writes an insightful blog Hit the North, and has been a fantastic mentor and a great inspiration to me. If perhaps, as a result of my constant badgering and nagging for advice. David, your efforts will be rewarded in heaven. I can assure you of this.
Over the course of the last two years, one publication that I worked with to varying degrees is the monthly UK based magazine Real Travel. I first started off with submitting selections of my travel images to their Reader's Gallery, and then from there I got the opportunity to review Tim Butcher's Blood River . And now, nearly two years on and several more book reviews and contributions later, I finally will have my first full-length feature published next month in their October issue.
The article will look at my time spent in Sumatra earlier this year. This is such a great achievement for me, even if I have to say so myself, and I am very excited.
So you can imagine how privileged I felt when Hfu Reisenhofer, Real Travel's newly appointed Chief Editor, asked me to contribute a few words towards an article he was writing about breaking into the industry, as I am a 'reader turned writer'...
If you would like to get a better insight into this and fancy reading my ''words of wisdom', then take a sneaky peak here: So you want to be a travel writer?
Hope you enjoy!
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