Tag Archives: writing

Blog Awards

Bloggers are a supportive group. And one of the ways they support each other is to pass awards around.  Some time ago I

lovely-blog-award-copy
Lovely BLog Award

proudly displayed the Sisterhood Award.  Yesterday when I was checking traffic, I found that some people clicked over from the site of Ellen Barone and I wondered why, so I wandered over to Ellen’s site.

And there I discovered the Lovely Blog Award. Ellen had included A Traveler’s Library among the fifteen blogs she awarded this blog to.

The rules for this award are:
1. Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award and his or her blog link.

2. Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you’ve newly discovered.

3. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

I thought it might be quite a challenge to list fifteen blogs that I had newly discovered, and I confess that some on the following list have been friends for a while. Here are the blogs that I find lovely, and I hope that you may enjoy some of them yourself.

Will My Dog Hate Me? asks Edie Jarolim, author of a humorous dog owner’s book to be released in September.

The Gypsy’s Guide, a new version of a blog called Just go, written by Angela K. Nickerson, author, guide  and travel writer with expertise in Italy.

A Life Divided, by Sue Dickman covers India and food and gardening in her home in the United States.

Bike With Jackie, gives tips for a happy and productive life by travel writer and author Jackie Dishner.

Velvet Escape, is the beautiful travel article blog and website of Keith Jenkins, who has circled the globe.

My Itchy Travel Feet takes us on adventure travel particularly aimed at Baby Boomers, filled with beautiful photography, courtesy of travel writer Donnal L. Hull.

Music Road, by Kerry Dexter, brings us music she finds as she roams, particularly in Ireland and Scotland.

Mother of All Trips Mara Gorman brings beautiful writing to her stories of family travel.

Facing the Street In this and a sister website, La Vida Local, Laura Byrne Paquet answers all your questions about living like a local when you travel.

Bookstore Guide provides travelers with information on bookstores around the world.

My Melange brings a joyful travel experience, mostly to Italy and France from the knowledgable freelance writer Robin Locker.

A Very Curious Mind is the personal blog of busy travel and food blogger Alison Wellner.

Horrible Sanity, the title borrowed from Edgar Allen Poe, presents the personal musings of freelance writer Danielle Buffardi.

Trust the Universe, by Rosie Colombraro, says “There’s Always Plan B”

And that Friends, is my FOURTEEN Lovely Blogs. I hereby change rule two to state “as many as you want”.

Travel Writing Over The Volleyball Net

Joseph Wood Krutch garden at U of A during Book Festival
Joseph Wood Krutch garden at U of A during Book Festival

[I wrote this after attending the 2009 Tucson Festival of Books, where I attended a session with two travel writers.]

Rolf Potts and Tom Miller talked about travel writing to a lecture theater packed with Tucsonans last weekend at the Tucson Festival of Books. The secret of success, they said, may be over a volleyball net.

When traveler and writer Rolf Potts describes his career arc, it is enough to make other travel writers at least roll their eyes, if not go somewhere quiet and lie down until the nausea passes. Talented, yes, but more boldly adventurous and self assured than the bookish crew writers usually are, he got his start by selling an article to Salon. For those of you who are principally readers rather than writers–let me explain. That’s a sale that most travel writers spend years aspiring to.

The secret to his success? After this auspicious beginning, he put himself in interesting places, practiced persistence, worked hard, and  persuaded Salon to assign him a regular column and from that point on major magazines like Esquire, New York Times Magazine and National Geographic Traveler came calling. Nowadays, it may not be unlawful to publish a “Best of” book about travel writing without Potts, but it is highly unlikely.

Potts teaches travel writing in Paris (more rolled eyes and murmurs of “tough life”) and says the main message is that it is what you throw out, more than what you decide to use, that makes a good story.  That, and developing the knack of selecting the telling detail of a culture, build a riveting tale. His first book, Vagabonding is a how-to book for taking off from “normal” life and traveling around the world wherever whim takes you. He describes his work as “postmodern” in the opening of his latest book, Marco Polo Didn’t Go There tacks meta endnotes–a postmodern term if there ever was one–on each chapter to tell us behind the scene information about what was left out and why or to further explain what was left in.

He  observes  that he looks for the intersection between the news (mostly bad stuff) and traditional travel writing (mostly romanticized stuff). He wants to describe the texture of life between these two polls. Being open to participating in the life around you helps. Once in Thailand, some villagers invited him to join a volleyball game–not out of diplomacy or , but because he was by far the tallest person in the region. His hosts quickly became disheartened when they learned that he could not play a good game of volleyball, despite being tall and blond.

Rolf Potts was speaking in a session along with Tucson resident Tom Miller, no slouch himself at landing good writing contracts.  But the irony is that Miller discussed the time in South America when his car was stopped and he was invited to join a volleyball game. At one point the game stopped, one of the team members pulled over a car on the highway, extracted a bribe, came back and resumed the game. We will talk about Miller and his Southwest and Mexico travels soon, focusing on  Jack Ruby’s Kitchen Sink, which I am currently reading.

Now I know why I am not a famous travel writer. I am not tall, and no one ever invited me to play volleyball in a third-world country.