Author Wendy Dale

ABOUT WENDY DALE

Wendy Dale is the author of Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals: Adventures in Love and Danger, published by Three Rivers (Random House) in May 2003. Her book has been reviewed in USA Today, Outside Magazine, Bookpage, Time Out New York and Playgirl. She is also the co-writer of the Emmy nominated television feature, The New Adventures of Mother Goose. She currently has a conract for two young adult novels for Dutton (a division of Penguin). For more information, visit her Web site at http:/​/​www.wendydale.com.

SOME INTRODUCTORY WORDS

Like many people, I dreamed of seeing my travels in print. However, the road to getting a publishing contract was paved with more more obstacles than I encountered in my travels.

In this site, I'm going to try and provide some of the lessons I learned during my seven-year odyssey, which began when I set my first word down on paper and ended when I walked into Barnes & Noble and saw my books on the shelves.

I know nothing about self-publishing. This is a site designed for writers who want to get a book published the conventional (and more difficult) route. Also, I don't know much about publishing abroad, so I'll focus on the experience as it relates to the United States.

When it comes to general tips on writing query letters and submitting to agents, I'll try and provide some links, but I personally won't rehash all this information since it's easy to find in so many places on the Web. I'll try to stick to lessons that I have learned -- in short, this will be the Web site I wish I'd had when I first started writing about my travels.

I've just started this Website, so please be patient with me as I add information. In the meantime, if you'd like to visit my book Website, go to www.wendydale.com.

Also, if you know of a publisher or agent who's receptive to travel essays or travelogues, drop me an e-mail at wendy@​wendydale.com so I can add that name to my list.

Happy travels!

Avoiding writing about your travels at all costs

Yes, I know I said I would dedicate this site to explaining HOW to publish your travel writing, but think twice before you actually do it. Really. The competition is fiece. But more so than that, armchair travel is a dismal-selling genre. Most mainstream publishers won't even look at manuscripts in this category because they consider your work to be unmarketable -- it doesn't matter how good it is.

Keep in mind that this is coming from a published author. I got a contract from Random House. So success is not impossible. It's just very hard and if you're going to go for it, you need to know exactly what you're up against.

First, I'm going to give you a reality check about the tough world of book publishing. After after you know the bad news, I'll try and give you some tips for getting around it. Here goes:

1) Consider another genre. What is more important to you -- being a writer or a traveler? If being a writer is at the top of your list, consider publishing in a different category. If you've led an adventurous, international life, think about writing a memoir instead of a travel narrative. Memoir sells a lot better than travel essays, which means editors are much happier to actually take a look at your manuscript. Had I known this when I first started out, frankly I would have written a memoir. (I'm at work on that now actually.)

2) Consider becoming famous. If your name is Brittany Spears or JLo, it doesn't matter if your travel story is about a trip to the grocery store. Your story will sell. And an editor will buy it. These days, publishing has become a business. An editor may love your style and story but that editor has to convince the marketing and publicity departments that your story is marketable and just saying the words "travel narrative" can be the kiss of death. Do you have credits to your name? Do you regularly write for magazines? Do you have a radio show? Do you have a Web site that receives a good number of hits? Any of these things can greatly increase your chances of getting a book contract because you already have a built-in audience. (Personally, I didn't have any of these things when I started, though it would have made my life a lot easier if I had.) Consider writing for magazines or even your local paper first -- it builds your reputation and can also augment your income.

3) Give yourself a realistic timeframe. Publishing is a very slow process. For me, finding an agent took nearly a year (and lots of rejection letters). After signing with her, I rewrote for nearly a year. And after getting an offer from Crown, it was another year and a half until the book actually hit bookstores. That's three-and-a-half years, not counting the time it took to travel and put together a first draft of my book.

Still not scared off? Some tips on travel writing

I'm not going to cover any basics here. I'm going to tell you what your story has to contain so that the marketing department of your publisher can successfully promote your book. But what does marketing have to do with my travels, you ask? Everything, I'm afraid. Brace yourself!

(1) Your book has to be about something. It's not enough to say that you've written a book about your travels that's extremely funny, for instance. You have to be able to describe your book as "a journey to the world's least likely vacation spots" or "a trip by land through Africa" or "a year in Amsterdam," etc. There has to be a thread uniting your travels. This is so that the marketing department at your publishing house has a way to describe your book. "A very funny book about traveling" doesn't cut it. What do the places you visited have in common? Is it a journey through British Commonwealth nations? Is it a journey to all the countries where you had free places to stay? Is it trips to countries with the best beer?

Tony Hawks (whom I've never actually read) is great at this. I know he has one book about traveling through Ireland with a fridge. Jeff Greenwald wrote a book (also haven't read it) about shopping for Buddas in Asia. All his trips had this goal in mind. So, your task is to think about how to describe your book in one especially intriguing phrase.

(2) The opening of your book is critical and it has to explain what made you embark on your journeys. Explaining the reason why you decided to travel is important for two reasons: firstly, we have to know a little bit about you in order to even care what happens to you later. And secondly, there needs to be a motive for your travels, at least if you're dealing with an American publisher. Loving to travel isn't enough.

Many of the rejections I got (keep in mind that at this point, my book was being submitted by a reputable agent) were because of this very factor. One editor said "if only she had traveled because of a failed relationship or if she were in search of some physical object." Publishers need a way to sum up who you are neatly in one short blurb on the back cover. If you were disillusioned with corporate life in London, this would be your motive. If you have one scene that show exactly at what point you got fed up, this would make a wonderful beginning -- telling your boss off and grabbing a plane to Spain the next day or something like that.

This was something that I struggled with a lot in my book. Reality is always much more complicated that literature – in a book, you have to sum up the themes of your life in nice tidy packages. In the first draft that I gave my agent, she harped a lot on the beginning of the book and the motives for my travels and I spent months thinking about this and rewriting. It took a lot of soul-searching to realize that it was my parents’ decision to move to Honduras that inspired me. In the first draft of my book, their move to Honduras was chapter two and was simply a place I visited because I had a free ticket. But as I kept writing, I realized what a huge impact their move had had on my life and my worldview.

In a later draft, I opened the book with the Honduras chapter and used my parents as my motive for traveling; however, not even this was enough. I managed to sell the book to Crown, but in order to do it, they wanted to see yet a new introduction, one that explained my motives in a much tidier fashion. Hence, the hating my corporate job and quitting work to travel, which is true, but oversimplified. I really did fantasize about leaving that job to hop on the next international flight, but in the book, I took liberties with time – in real life, I left this corporate job two years before I actually visited Honduras.

(3) Look back and find the themes in your travels. When I first started my book, I was writing at the same time I was traveling. In other words, the first draft read like a diary: today I did this, the next day I did this, then I went here. Granted, the writing was funny and interesting, but when my agent read it, she said it got kind of boring after a while because as a reader, you want a full story that has a beginning, middle and end. What makes a diary feel boring after a while is that it has no theme. When you write your daily entry, you have no idea what is going to happen tomorrow so there’s no foreshadowing, no long-term aspiration toward a single goal. It’s impossible to pick out the themes of your life while you’re in the middle of it. You can only look back at what the themes of your life have been.

So after my travels had been completed, I had to go back and figure out what I had been searching for. Why did I really go to Lebanon? In the first draft, I wrote that I went because I had a free place to stay and it sounded like a crazy place to visit.

But as I sat down to rewrite, I realized that Lebanon really was a continuation of my desire to experience a new carefree approach to life. In the introduction of my book, I had already established my fantasies of leaving my job to travel; in chapter one, I extended this theme, showing how my parents taught me that such a thing is really possible. And in chapter three, I realized that I needed to extend this search for irresponsibility, which was very simple to do. After all, my whole life it had been Peter who had been trying to get me to lighten up and take life less seriously. So when he suggests that I visit him in Beirut, for once I decide to give in to his advice.

When you think in terms of theme, you give a reader a reason to root for you. A protagonist who merely stumbles across the meaning of life is not nearly as satisfying to a reader as a protagonist who searches everywhere for the meaning of life and finally discovers it.

Now that I’ve said all this, I hope it doesn't sound like my book was untruthful, that I was deliberately seeking out themes that weren’t there. These themes really were part of my life all along; it wasn’t a matter of inventing them. The challenge in writing the book was PICKING OUT the strongest themes. Because real life is more complicated than literature. My real life story has far too many themes to cover in one book so I had to simplify. I had to choose the path that seemed to best tell the story. I could have written an entirely different book and still been truthful. I was forced to make creative decisions about the nature of the story I wanted to tell.

Some places to get started

Traveler's Tales (www.travelerstales.com) is a small publisher devoted exclusively to publishing travel literature. They haven't been very receptive about my own work because I violate the rules of travel writing all the time (my book is edgy and irreverent and I don't dwell much on scenic description). However, if you have a traditional tale, this may be just the place for you. Another great thing about this publisher is that they accept on-line submissions for their anthologies, meaning that you don't have to have completed an entire book to see your story in print.

Lonely Planet (www.lonelyplanet.com) has always been one of my favorite guidebook publishers, and they also have a Journeys imprint that publishes travel writing. However, their list is extremely short and I've gotten the sense (perhaps erroneously) that they prefer to work with Australian writers, where their headquarters are based. I got an extremely nice and apologetic letter TWO YEARS after I submitted to them, explaining how very few travel narratives they publish each year. Trying to get published with them is a real longshot, but you should still definitely buy their guidebooks! I've made contact with them several times and they've always struck me as nice and competent folk.

A NOTE ABOUT DEALING WITH THE "BIG GUYS"

If you want to get published by one of the major publishers like Random House or Simon & Shuster, you have to have an agent. These houses won't even open a letter from you. Anything has to come from an agent whose name they recognize.

However, if you do get an agent, the good news is that there are imprints of the big houses devoted to publishing travel literature. Crown Journeys is devoted exclusively to this as is Vintage Departures (both are Random House) and there are many others (names to come at a later date).

When I get a little more time, I'll add some listings of agents who consider travel literature. Check back soon.