Killing Batteries

I think by now that I’ve managed to drive home the point that, while totally awesome at times, on most days travel writing is about as sexy as answering phones and data entry at the National Center for Statistical Reporting of Barley Yields.

There is copious unsexy downtime and tedium in travel writing and, sadistically, even those intervals can be mentally draining. Although I’m certainly biased, there are few jobs that I’m aware of, or can imagine, that demand the same full-on analytical, detail-oriented, creative, clerical, organizational, financial, social, cultural, physical and diplomatic requirements as travel writing. This holds true whether you’re writing a 500 word article or updating a 60,000 word guidebook. Well, it should hold true at any rate, but the evidence in certain (in-flight) magazines, newspapers and blogs suggests that you can get by without most of what I’d consider the bare minimum of effort or ability.

From the list above, you can extrapolate how much of travel writing involves being dropped out of a helicopter to ski down the Andes Mountains, right up to the VIP entrance of a luxury spa and then ending the day with copious booze and an eight course surf and turf banquet with the mayor and how much of it involves sitting in front of a laptop researching, fact checking, networking, beseeching, weeping and sometimes writing the perfect introduction.

Travel writing isn’t kind of like a rollercoaster ride, it’s exactly like a rollercoaster ride: waiting in the interminably long and slow moving line surrounded by yokels, drunks and idiots; climbing onboard; the slow, chugging and neck-snapping climb; the mind-bending crest; the electrifying plunge causing primal screams and blood to pool at the back of your skull; the disappointing final straightaway, largely dull with undulating, minor thrills, but already making you nostalgic for the seemingly distant plunge; and finally coming to a stop and staggering to the exit with your head spinning, minor injuries and occasional vomiting.

In less metaphoric terms, the general arc of a guidebook job goes something like this:

Week 1: Unsexy pitching (read: begging) for work

Week 2: Unsexy fee negotiations and, in my case, insomnia spike

Week 3: Getting the gig (OK, that’s kinda sexy), followed by the unsexy realization of the true scope of the gig, which always turns out to be way bigger than you realized, and stirring up Freelancer’s Remorse at having been too supplicating during Week 2

Weeks 4 & 5: Receiving unremitting, unsexy piles of documentation, guidelines, the product manual, the old text, maps, the map guidelines, and loads of random emails all crammed with essential information and tasks that you must satisfy during the gig, then copying, pasting and geographically organizing this litany of data into one document (which, if you ask me, should have been done in the first place), so that nothing gets overlooked during the controlled chaos that punctuates on-the-ground research and, if there’s any time left, cramming vocab and lost language skills

Weeks 6-?: Very sexy, though often grueling, on-the-ground research, which, depending on the scope of the project, lasts anywhere from three to eight weeks, and frequently includes one or more unsexy, near-disastrous obstacles like bed bugs, food poisoning and car accident(s)

Write-up (6-8 weeks): Arguably the most jarring, dispiriting and unsexy part – shifting gears overnight from travel, hyper-socializing, and a steady sensory overload of cool and singular experiences to sitting alone in your anti-stimulating home, surrounded by stacks of notes, tattered maps, brochures, business cards (usually proffered by friendly, enthusiastic people who will then never answer any of your emails) and embarking on the task of transcribing all that information into a logical, concise, triple-checked, layout-friendly and pleasant-to-read format

As some of you have probably surmised from the recent laziness on this blog and my one-track tweets, I’ve been wholly absorbed in the weeks 3-5 part of the process. While everyone else I know has been hooting it up at SXSWi or standing bewildered at the gorgeous weather in Minnesota these past few days, I’ve been locked inside my Condo of Solitude, doing prep work that I call ‘prudent’ and others call ‘batshit obsessive-compulsive’.

But all that is about to change. Tomorrow, via layovers in Cincinnati (Three hours! Someone please tell me there’s free wi-fi!) and Paris, I’ll be rocketing to Pisa, getting into a 2-door Fiat Panda, powering up the GPS on my loaner Nokia N85 and heading into the exceptionally sexy world of researching Tuscan towns, food and wine. Even after you subtract the significant Sexy Points I lose by driving the Panda and wearing nothing but Old Navy t-shirts, cargo pants and trainers, I’m expecting amorous people to fall all over me as I flash around my official letters of introduction in two languages from both Lonely Planet and the Italian Government Tourist Board, not to mention carrying the current edition of Tuscany & Umbria that already has my name and sexy picture in it.

I have the added advantage of having already done this gig, so the lengthy and unsexy discovery process and being hopelessly lost for several hours a day will be removed from the equation. I’ve also had (slightly) more time to prepare this time around, allowing me to track down and make contact with a small army of officials, informers, friends and handlers throughout the region. I’m not gonna jinx myself and say it’ll be easy, but it’ll certainly be easier than last time. And even if it’s not, it’s difficult to complain about researching a guidebook in Tuscany – and even more difficult to gain any sympathy.

With that, I’m signing off. Blog readers will be hearing very little from me in the next month, though Twitter followers should see self-satisfied, giddy tweets almost daily, hopefully augmented with random pictures, assuming in the past two years that someone in Tuscany has finally gone around and introduced proprietors to the cutting edge technology known as ‘wi-fi’.

As a preview of what’s to come, or to fill the gapping Killing Batteries void in your life, you can review my Tuscany Lists from 2007, where I detailed the best and worst of my trip and TMI details like how many times I did laundry in a month (one). Heck, rereading some of the posts, pretty much anything from April or May of 2007 should give you a firm idea of what I’ll be getting into starting Tuesday morning.

Thanks for sticking with me and I look forward to being the target of your wretched envy for the next month.

Agonizing over travel insurance? Maybe I can help…

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Hi! Remember me? I used to blog here during the Clinton Administration. I’ve been a little busy hiding out in a yurt in the steppes of South Dakota, changing locations every third day under the cover of night for the past eight years, but I’m back now!

Actually, I’m not quite back yet. Tuscany prep and a short paying gig have totally derailed my life. I’d like nothing more than to blog about my booty and post pictures of starlets in see-through dresses, but in these times of economic uncertainty I gotta give the paying work priority.

However, I’ve managed to find some text to lazily paste here in place of original writing. Actually, this is all original writing as far as you guys know, so disregard that last sentence. A new Twitter follower asked me today if there was a “life story synopsis” on my blog, explaining how I got into travel writing and I realized to my horror that there was not! How did this happen? How can I have a blog about me, written by me, in order to shamelessly promote me, and not have a life story synopsis? It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard in the entire course of my existence! Well, that and when Michelle Bachmann got re-elected.

So, I’m tackling that scandalous omission now. Without asking permission from my agent (She’s on a slow boat to India right now, what’s she gonna do, email me to death?), I’m posting a excerpt from my latest book proposal (is 835 words still technically a ‘synopsis’?), a heartbreaking work of travel memoir-y genius, which briefly explains why I’m a travel writer and not the guy that monitors national and international electronic payments networks for the US Federal Reserve System.

The selection picks up on my life story at age 24, after returning from two post-university backpacking tours of Europe in 18 months, during which time I took a particular liking to the lifestyle in Spain, to face the real world and submit to a career. It ends abruptly, so as to avoid getting into a meatier section of the book and giving away its super-awesome, career-making hook. Enjoy.

…………………………………………..

When I returned to the US to reluctantly begin my career, in my youthful naivety, I decided that I would live as the Spanish lived. I would place priority on my personal life no matter the cost, and if that meant eliminating any trace of professional ambition and languishing in eternal mediocrity, well then that’s simply how my life would have to be.

Conveniently, with my Theatre Arts degree and the dire state of the entry-level job market in 1994, I didn’t have any choice but to embrace a low-income, Euro-slacker lifestyle. Indeed, I immediately landed one of those jobs specially reserved for people such as myself: switchboard operator at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

This was a job that I’d performed handily during university. I could work a phone with the same technique and élan as a concert pianist, answering and transferring calls for hours without ever looking up from my book.

Having, I felt, ingeniously found a job that only required 5% of my brain processing capacity there was little stopping me from staggering into work on two hours of sleep in the throes of a raging Rum-and-Cokeurism. Staying true to my inner-Spaniard, I would skulk off and nap during lunch. Since time and distance prevented me from returning home for my siesta, I had to sidle into one of the ‘resting rooms’ at the Bank, meant for sick people and lactating mothers.

This went on for two of the most carefree years of my adult life, before things like TV commercial brainwashing, peer pressure and envy finally got the better of me. Actually, more than anything, I’d finally had enough of watching people earning twice what I was earning who couldn’t even print out envelopes without assistance. I slowly let go of my pursuit of leisure, hobbies and rum and clawed my way up the ranks of the Federal Reserve, jockeying and leaping up the pay scale through five jobs in six years until I hit the big time. I was getting a comfortable check, I had my very own high-walled cubicle, and I was the proud owner of all the essential Bank-issued status symbols: a laptop, pager and cell phone.

At about the same time that I achieved what I’d coveted for years, I suddenly realized that my career had taken control of my life and I was the least content that I’d ever been. Out of the blue, I was 32, divorced, overburdened with crap I didn’t need, working an insane on-call schedule, dangerously dependent on caffeine and muttering darkly about life. I’d succeeded in duplicating the Pettersen family career blueprint.

A series of hangover driven moments-of-clarity occurred, making me realize that I had to act fast or I would lose 40 of the most important years of my life to the Federal Reserve. And act fast I did. In a frenzied six-week period, I implemented a critical mass of rash and irreversible decisions: I quit my job, sold my house, car and all earthly possessions, bought a laptop and flew to Europe with the intention of breaking and entering into the travel writing industry.

With no applicable writing experience, no connections and no clue, the first two years of my travel writing career were reminiscent of the pandemonium and accidental success of an Inspector Clouseau investigation.  But I toured nearly 40 countries on four continents and wrote about every escapade.

After months of manic and hilariously misguided pitching to newspapers in the US, my first true paying gig came when a magazine editor in need of a short article on Lisbon found my travelogue during desperate Googling. After considerable editing, I managed to turn in something that wasn’t too bad and proudly earned my first byline. When she learned that I was traveling overland from Romania to Greece a few weeks later she asked if I might like to stop in Istanbul and write a feature for her. The travel writing snowball had finally started rolling downhill.

By the end of my second year on the road, though I had managed to fortuitously snare a few more juicy magazine assignments, the real break finally arrived. I landed a gig updating Lonely Planet guidebooks for both Romania and Moldova. With the exposure that my Lonely Planet work provided, combined with an increasingly large pile of glossy magazine clippings, I was quite suddenly loaded with more travel writing assignments than I could handle and, more importantly, getting paid a living wage.

Apart from the amazed satisfaction of having orchestrated my very own dream job, all that long-term, homeless travel and living entirely out of two modest-sized bags triggered multiple defining lifestyle epiphanies. I realized that even some of the most dirt-poor people on Earth were generally happier than pretty much everyone I knew at home. I realized that a simple life was the best – and possibly only – technique for reducing stress. Finally, I realized that I needed surprisingly little money, possessions and living space to have a rewarding life.

Agonizing over travel insurance? Maybe I can help…

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