Travel Writing

The trip I took to Portland Maine a couple weeks ago was paid for by the Maine Department of Tourism, so that I could write a travel piece on Portland, Freeport, Kennebunkport, and Ogunquit. I've written dozens of travel stories before about places I've visited, but those were usually written after the fact and on my dime. This was my first time getting flown somewhere specifically to write about that place.

It wasn't the glamorous kind of travel junket people hear about, where writers get flown first class to the fanciest hotels in the world and spend all day sampling the local caviar, only to return home, write up a 200-word blurb about it, and show off their dark savage tans for the next month.

No, this was a very do-it-yourself trip. I flew into the Boston airport, picked up the cheapest rental car we could find, and drove two hours the first night to Portland- which has its own airport but the flights to Boston were cheaper. They comped my hotels, arranged for several meals, and gave me a stipend to spend on other meals.

I think I spent a little bit more than the stipend amount, and that's because I'm a vegetarian and the meals are a lot cheaper that way. One lobster dinner would have cost as much as three of my veggie burgers, and then I would have been really in the red. I wasn't starving by any means, but it did take some skillful budgeting to make the cash last.

Now, if I were writing a feature piece for a national travel magazine, the publication would have paid expenses, and some of those places are very generous. Some publications like the New York Times prohibit writers from taking anything fore free at all. Ethics- what a pain! But I'm not writing for them yet. The thing is, I'm not totally sure I would want to.

While on this trip to Maine I wasn't thinking about the number of words in the final story I'd have to write. Instead I made a point to see everything I could, stop into every store, eat at a different restaurant for every meal, and at least swing by all the major attractions if not stop into them for an hour or two. In other words, I tried to be as thorough as I could.

But don't get the impression that I didn't enjoy my time. I had a good time, saw nearly everything there was to see, and can convey accurately to the readership of the magazine why they would want to visit the area. Did I have a great time, partying all night and spending a good part of each morning hungover, wearing sunglasses, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee at outdoor cafes like I usually do when I travel? No, I was there working. Ethics- what a pain!

And being there working and trying to see everything, I couldn't do a lot of other work that I would've gotten done if I'd stayed home. Instead, I spent six days working exclusively on one story that in the end will pay less than $500. That's not very good pay for hard work. The good news is that since Day Job pays me full benefits, I was still getting paid while traveling.

I guess the lesson I've learned from this jaunt is that either I shouldn't worry about being so thorough (as I used about a tenth of the content I could have written) or should start writing for publications that can afford to pay expenses, or travel to places that have a lot of money to spend wooing travel writers. But in the end I went on a vacation to the opposite coast for free, and even if what I got paid for being there wasn't very much, I got to break out of my bubble and walk around someplace that isn't my ghetto for a little change. So it was probably better for me mentally than financially, and that makes it worthwhile.