Hudin Recap 02-08-2008

My writing here has been a bit hit and miss as far as regularity goes. This is because I've been writing a good deal more at other sites. It's not to say that I'm neglecting Hudin, but more using it as a place to write about my personal shiznit. I'm sure that the next time I go traveling (next month) I'll be putting up more here. But, for those interested who don't follow my Twitter spam feed, here are some of the recent things I've written:

Subsaharska on Maneno:

The Camera is not the Important Part Musing on the crazy equipment people buy when they really need to focus on the basics of photography first.

Finding the Names to Explain Chatting about the myriad of domain names. Honestly, probably not my best work, but it would be weird not to mention it sequentially.

W00t for more Languages! Excitement over Google expanding their African language options for search which is cool stuff.

The 'Web Free' (Web 3.0) Starts in Africa Part of the OLPC debate that went around the web a week or two ago as well as talking about the next iteration of the web (Web Free as I call it). One of the stronger things I've written, although it could be no end of boring for a deal of people out there.

Global Voices:

Croatia: Changing Eminent Domain for a Golfing Gain Maybe it was the cheesy title, but I hoped this would get more play on the site not just because I think it's the best researched article I've written there, but also because some people are really getting screwed in all this corruption happening in the name of golf!

Blue Danube Wine Blog:

A Cold, Wintry Revisit to La Vinyeta Tasty wines in Northern Catalonia.

A Taste of Slovenia at CAV Minor tasting event that was decent of Slovenian wines.

Cantallops, Where the Fruit is Wine From about a month ago, but another great tasting Northern Catalonia.

08 02 2009      0 comments

Tags: croatia, hudin, in to africa, wine, writing

Thomas Kohnstamm is your Typical Ass

If you hadn't heard, this story recently broke about this travel writer, Thomas Kohnstamm, who apparently claims to have fabricated a great deal of what he wrote for the Lonely Planet. This of course all coming out as he has his own book being released in a few days called, "Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?".

Of course now that the news has been picked up through the wire, he is naturally backpeddling a good deal. I'm not sure what he thought was going to happen. You say far-flung things to get attention and surprise, surprise, you get attention. But whatever the case, from everything that I've read (which is perhaps more source material than he supposedly plagiarized) he is just full of crap. For instance, this story is just ridiculous. There are others in there as well. I don't understand how someone who is supposed to be a travel writer, guiding others could possibly get themselves in so much trouble unless they're such an inept traveler that there would be no reason to listen to them. Or there's the fact that there's absolutely no truth to his stories whatsoever.

In the end, I would warrant that his book is a complete work of fiction, no matter what he says. I worked for a travel book publisher some time ago and they do indeed vet and verify the data their writers collect. They have to because whether it's just some traveler who was misled or some assey (and presumably former) writer of theirs changing their tune, they have to be able to lean back on their haunches and know that their books are the most accurate possible.

Undoubtedly, if anyone is stupid enough to follow this stunt and actually buy Thomas's book, I'm sure he'll recant all of the text in there just in time to try and get a movie deal. Everyone needs to do the writing community at large a huge favor and not buy this book, let it die, and let this guy go out and get a real job where he can peddle idiotic flights of fancy around the water cooler until everyone in the office gets as sick of him as I did in reading what he's said.

14 04 2008      0 comments

Tags: travel, writing

Travel Writing is a Dream Job... for Dreamers

Before my last stint traveling around Europe last summer, I got a lot of "Gee, that must be nice." or "Nice life you've got there." This was of course all said with a bit of a sarcastic tone.

I only had one real goal when heading there, which was to research the wines of the Dalmatian region in Croatia. What ultimately got tossed on top of that just before leaving was writing for two companies during the travels. So, inadvertently, what started out as just a hobby project with no direction, ended up being full time travel writing that paid for most all of the trip. Contrary to what people think, this was a lot of work. The days were long and went far in to the night to get stories out in a timely fashion while still traveling.

Of course, once I got back and got the same response from people, I tried to clarify the misconception of how "great" this kind of work was. Yes, I definitely do like it, but it isn't relaxing. You don't sip on a drink in a hammock, write for 30 minutes, and then send it out to collect a fat paycheck. No, we had to stick to a pretty tight budget (we didn't get paid until we returned) and we had to run around a lot.

To people who like wine, visiting 6-12 wineries in a day might sound like a dream, but it's damned hard work, especially when you're working to speak a second language, it's hot, you have to either spit out the wine or get groggy and irritable from it, and you're navigating another country's roads that you're never been on before. All that drinking under the sun has the harsh reality that you crash hard at night, having spent another day of what everyone thinks is just a fun holiday, being a receptacle of information that you then need to process and write. Out of four months along the Mediterranean, I think there were all of six or seven days of that spent at the beach. I know people who double that amount when they take their annual (and pathetically short) two week holiday in the US.

Still, there are those who doubt as to the fact that this is really work. So to that, I present this article which is an interview with a Lonely Planet writer. From my experience, I agree completely with what he wrote, but instead of trying to figure out some way to describe the exact same chain hotel floral bedsheets, I had to discover how to uniquely describe my 15th tasting of Blatina and Žilavka wines in Herzegovina, because that's almost all they grow there.

Yes, this may all sound like I'm whining and asking for sympathy while others punch a time clock in a cubicle somewhere. But in reality, this "dream job" is just that. Between the time you spend researching and writing, plus all the time you put in for free (like this blog and others) you end up spending many more hours working than just 40 hours a week. It may seem like an exciting adventure, but it's rough and you can burn out if you do it for too long, which is why most professional travel writers will bounce between writing, photography, editing, tour guiding, professional speaking, being a hermit in a mountain cave, and then trying the writing again.

If you still don't believe me, then here. That's a list of 50+ publications that are looking for writers. Come up with an idea or two, set off on an adventure and see how much time you have for mai tais in a hammock while you try to meet your deadline on a tight budget.

29 01 2008      2 comments

Tags: tourism, travel, writing