Essential skill: frugality

Chapter 4 aids the travel journalist by outlining tips, tools, and cautions which should help journalists cover stories at a home market or on the road. Likewise, Seth Kugel of the New York Times Travel section updates travel tips for the new year. Kugel devotes the entire article to helping travelers master the technique of traveling frugally which can lead to more experiences which in turn contributes to the travel writers end goal.

Kugel encourages the aspiring traveler to adjust their mental budget. Instead of thinking about staying home for another average weekend one should be

subtracting what you save by not being home. Surely you would have gone out for dinner and a movie one night, at least, so knock off $100. Add in gas, groceries, electricity, etc., and you’ve got at least another $50.

Kugel also warns that…

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Rules to help writing

Chapter 4 outlines the essential skills and knowledge for the travel journalist. The guardian.co.uk put together a list of rules by Zadie Smith that may make any writer better. Here are a few of her rules,

  • When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.
  • When an adult, try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.
  • Don’t romanticise your “vocation”. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no “writer’s lifestyle”. All that matters is what you leave on the page.
  • Leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it.