John Lucas

on travel writing and sundry matters

 

John Lucas is a retired professional journalist who never actually retired: he is also a past president of Verulam Writers' Circle.

At a very tender age, John cycled to the Hertfordshire home of George Bernard Shaw in an attempt to interview him - he was met with a stony response. This incident did not deter him in any way, and he has a long history of writing form broadsheet papers in Fleet Street (he still maintains a relationship with some of them).

This article is a precis of his talk to the Circle on 14 May 2003: it is reproduced here with his kind permission.


SUMMARY OF DOs AND DON'Ts

1. Never stop writing, even when you're past "retirement age". It helps to keep the mind alive - and your pockets a-jingle.

2. Writers need optimism, persistence and a sense of curiosity. If you have these qualities, develop and build on them.

3. It's part of your job to help make life interesting for the reader. The most important paragraph of an article should always be the first. It should set the pace and should catch the reader's interest.

4. Remember: the past always informs the future. Learn from your mistakes - and don't repeat them.

5. Don't do as I did as a youngster, with Bernard Shaw, in trying to aim high. Train yourself. As a general rule, interview at a fairly low level and raise your sights later. As a freelance, you haven't got the backing of a publication behind you unless you have a firm commission. You're on your own, so don't expect an early chat with the Queen or the Prime Minister.

6. The public doesn't have much of a news sense, but you should have. Acquire an eye for the interesting or amusing fact, and work it into your piece.

7. If you are writing an article fringing on the technical, check facts with your Contact, or an expert. It's easy to slip up and make yourself look foolish.

8. Kit yourself out with reference books: an atlas, the two-volume Shorter Oxford (if you can run to them), the Oxford Reference Dictionary (defines words, includes potted biographies and facts). If your computer can accommodate it, you can get a CD programme containing the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica for £30.

9. Writing a travel article will give your holiday a point to it, but don't expect an editor to commission you and pay your expenses to finance it. Write in with a couple of suggestions for travel pieces, accompanying this with a stamped address envelope, a CV naming publications you have written for. A commission may be too much to hope for, so be happy with an interest in your suggestion(s), write them up and take a chance.

Travel articles have entered a phase beyond mere good writing. They are much more down to earth, and the writer may have to be willing to spend several hundred words on recommended hotels and restaurants.

Also, recent world unrest, primarily over Iraq, has decimated scope for travel articles. One national paper, suffering like all the rest from a fall-off in advertising, has stopped commissioning travel articles for several months, for lack of advertising support. Be warned.

The best way of being a travel writer, given that you can write, is to study the market intensively. Catch the mood and the type of writing they want by reading at least two newspapers on a Saturday, when travel articles tend to appear.

Remember; most travel locations have been written about at one time or another, so try to provide an usual angle - or one suggested by the news.

10. If at any time you enclose a CV, make sure it contains details under the following suggested headings - and on not more than one side of a sheet of paper:

Staff appointments (if any) Newspapers and magazines written for. Publications (books) Education, including any qualifications; Interests, including subjects specialised in.

11. The introduction of computer typesetting has led to a proliferation of magazines, often with several on one subject - railways, travel, flying, motor-cycling, money and mortgages, fishing, for example. Cash on this fact if you can; your piece may well fit in among them somewhere! Leaf through them on the bookstands to catch their flavour.

12. To make contact with a commissioning editor, ring his secretary and ask whether they prefer prospective contributors to write, email or fax in the first instance. And whether they prefer copy on disk, email or paper. (The former two save them resetting).

Finally, you're a writer, not a churner-out of hackneyed old phrases. So take the hint of that notice in the old "Daily Express" News Room:

AVOID CLICHES LIKE THE PLAGUE

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