Pronghorn Accuracy...and the Color of the Sea
Erik Gauger puts out an online email travel publication and website called Notes from the Road. I admire his balls-on, descriptive and reverant approach to travel.
"I tried pitching my stories to an online magazine called GORP, which I admired for their lack of annoying advertising, commercialization or pop-under ads or marketing associations.
Because the article was more or less a guidebook entry, I thought it appropriate to move our account of the pronghorn antelope to evening rather than morning. This would adjust the continuity and put the focus on travel tips, not our subjective experience. I then asked my brother to review the piece before I submitted it to GORP. He told me: This article is inaccurate. He said we saw the pronghorn antelope in the morning.
So I corrected it and realized there is never an excuse to fabricate or exaggerate, even in a travel tips story. If you stay consistent, credibility will be earned.
GORP accepted other articles and edited heavily. The editor said I should try to describe the water of Mexico's Pacific Ocean. I told him the water was unremarkable and it was unnecessary to thestory, which was about people.
He edited the ocean himself. He used the word 'aqua'. Then, 'undulating.'
'Undulating' is the one word that if you ever use as a travel writer, you should be shot. That's when I realized I could never write for somebody else. Travel writing is only travel writing if it is purely independent. Anything else, anything propped up by advertising has an agenda, and the travel industry's agenda is anathema to the genre of travel writing. If the travel writer is not independent, he is not
writing travel.
"I tried pitching my stories to an online magazine called GORP, which I admired for their lack of annoying advertising, commercialization or pop-under ads or marketing associations.
Because the article was more or less a guidebook entry, I thought it appropriate to move our account of the pronghorn antelope to evening rather than morning. This would adjust the continuity and put the focus on travel tips, not our subjective experience. I then asked my brother to review the piece before I submitted it to GORP. He told me: This article is inaccurate. He said we saw the pronghorn antelope in the morning.
So I corrected it and realized there is never an excuse to fabricate or exaggerate, even in a travel tips story. If you stay consistent, credibility will be earned.
GORP accepted other articles and edited heavily. The editor said I should try to describe the water of Mexico's Pacific Ocean. I told him the water was unremarkable and it was unnecessary to thestory, which was about people.
He edited the ocean himself. He used the word 'aqua'. Then, 'undulating.'
'Undulating' is the one word that if you ever use as a travel writer, you should be shot. That's when I realized I could never write for somebody else. Travel writing is only travel writing if it is purely independent. Anything else, anything propped up by advertising has an agenda, and the travel industry's agenda is anathema to the genre of travel writing. If the travel writer is not independent, he is not
writing travel.
posted by Max Hartshorne at 6:07 PM
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