The Wandering Chicken

I Must Not Make Lists

I gave up trying to earn a living as writer a long time ago. I’m not sure if it was because I lacked the discipline for it, the lack of money involved or that I didn’t have much to say. Probably a bit of all three and a few hundred other things.

Oddly enough, and all evidence to the contrary, even during my time of aspiration, I never fancied a career as a travel journalist. I don’t have much interest as a writer in journalism of any kind. I preferred fiction, which I suppose offered even fewer career prospects than the saturated world of non-fiction travel writing.

Part of my problem with the business of publishing and in journalism in particular is evident in this article, 10 Ways Not to be a Travel Writer by Lonely Planet’s Vivek Wagle. He argues that in travel writing you must “build your niche and establish your credibility in it,” rather than follow the more generalist path of a Bill Bryson. Setting aside for a moment the question of whether or not you can actually build a niche rather than find one, he’s absolutely right — if your goal is to get published in a travel magazine. It’s utterly practical advice that says nothing about writing engaging stories.

I’m not interested in finding my niche. I’ve never wanted my writing to be some sort of exhibition of expertise. I wasn’t interested in the ten things I should avoid if I want to be a published author. I just longed to express myself creatively through words, to make my readers laugh or cry, feel something. To connect with them through the characters I created and the life they gave them.

Maybe my lack of publishing acumen was my undoing as a writer, I don’t know. But I don’t really care. I wouldn’t have wanted to be that kind of writer anyway. If I’d succeeded I’d likely be writing lists of the 10 Best Places to Eat Tacos on the Beach to get the page views up and earn my keep at Such-and-Such-Travel-Dot-Com.

But who needs to be a “travel writer” now anyway? Or any kind of “writer” as defined by an antiquated publishing industry? I like to think now that technology has more or less made the traditional system obsolete, that aspiring writers will no longer have to worry about professional acceptance and be free to find their voice, to experiment with words and ideas without fear. To simply tell compelling stories the best way they know how.

With the barriers to publishing broken, there will be more worse writers out there assuredly; there already are. But how many more brilliant ones will there be to discover?