A few years ago, journalist David Farley wrote restaurant reviews and skimmed mediabistro.com for career advice. Since then, he’s managed to achieve every travel writer’s dream: scoring a book deal with Penguin’s Gotham Books imprint and traveling to a gorgeous Italian village to write about his travels. The result hits shelves this month: An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church’s Strangest Relic in Italy’s Oddest Town.
In an exclusive interview with mediabistro.com, Farley explains exactly how he achieved his dream. He outlines his career in step-by-step detail: the books he read for inspiration, the freelance jobs that built his career, and his survival tips from two years living and working as a writer in Italy.
Many writers, myself included, dream of the travel-writing lifestyle you enjoyed while writing this book. Any practical advice for freelancers looking to write this kind of work? How should they scout and pitch stories?
Also on Mediabistro
The first thing is you won’t get rich doing this. If you have a day job, keep your day job. If you are a freelancer, write about something else and flirt with travel writing. I pay my rent writing about food and dining in New York City.
| “A relatively big agent told me he didn’t think the relic had enough part of national consciousness to make a book. So I decided, ‘I’m going to make it a part of the national consciousness.'” |
There are only a handful people who can make a living with travel writing. I might write about the dining scene in New York, when I travel someplace else — it’s all within the same realm of writing. Travel writing is not a real genre of writing; in some ways, there are all kinds of stories that could or could not be considered travel writing.
You had the magical experience of turning an article into a book. Could you describe that process more in-depth, explaining how you ended up with a book deal at Penguin?
It’s a fun story for every person who dreams of writing a book. But it’s a frustrating, long, and rejection-filled journey. As a freelance writer, you read these stories on mediabistro.com about somebody who writes a high-profile article and gets a book deal. A relatively big agent told me he didn’t think the relic had enough part of national consciousness to make a book. So I decided, ‘I’m going to make it a part of the national consciousness.’
I pitched [the] New York Times travel section and got an assignment, but it took a long time for the story to come out. I also pitched Slate a more straightforward piece about the holy foreskin; I got the assignment.
When it came out, I was on assignment in Tivoli, a hill town outside of Rome. When I got back to Calcata, Italy, I had a bunch of emails from friends saying the story was all over the place, on Fark, in blogs, and on the radio. For a week, my story was [the] No. 1 story on Slate, and I had a New York Times travel section story, too. I wish everything I wrote had that kind of impact.
Within 24 hours, I got an email from Penguin books editor Patrick Mulligan. In my bio for Slate, I said I was writing a book about the holy foreskin as a nudge-nudge to somebody in the publishing industry. I arranged to have lunch with him; he told his boss the idea, William Shenker, and he loved it too. After that, it wasn’t hard to find an agent.
My Sterling Lord agent Jim Rutman was recommended to me. When I got the agent, he and I worked on the proposal a lot — he helped me shape the proposal into a state he thought would work well. The successful proposal I submitted to Penguin was 41 pages long.
| “That’s a benefit of living in a place that’s highly desired by traveling magazines and travelers: You end up coming up with more story angles.” |
As you were planning your trip to Italy, how much research/planning/outlining took place in the United States? What do writers need to have prepared before leaving on this kind of writing trip? Any important tools?
[The] best thing to do is make contact in the place where you want to live. I emailed a guy who rents out rooms and apartments in the village. Before I even left I had a place there. I didn’t have any work lined up. Ultimately, when you live in a place like Italy — a place that’s heavily covered by travel press — editors will start writing you. Some of the assignments I pitched, others I got out of the blue from friends I knew.
They say, “Let’s pay someone who already lives there so we don’t have to fly a writer out from New York.” That’s a benefit of living in a place that’s highly desired by traveling magazines and travelers: You end up coming up with more story angles because you are actually living there, find[ing] stories that are easier to come by than searching from New York.
I would say my ratio when I’m pitching stories — for every 20 pitches I send out, I get one assignment. In Italy, I sent out less because I was more focused on pitching the book. But I got more assignments than rejections out of the pitches. The ratio was much, much higher.
Freelance writers are having a rough time right now. What’s your advice for freelance writers looking to survive the upheaval at print publications?
A lot of the markets I was writing for are on hiatus or near-hiatus from assigning stories. Somehow, I don’t really know why, I keep getting assignments from various places. I just wrote an article for World Monuments Fund; their mission is to promote sustainable tourism and awareness for historical sites in danger. It’s a guide to sites off the tourist radar. One of those somebody put out the word that they needed a Rome writer.
That’s another strategy, is to have a geographical beat, because your name will surface because you’re known for writing about that part of the world. For me, it’s Prague and Italy. You’re able to focus your [energy] to stay abreast of what’s happening in those parts of the world.
How did you build your freelance lifestyle? How has it evolved?
I started out writing bar reviews for Shecky’s New York because nobody would hire me. There are these stepping-stones as freelance writers. Shecky’s New York is a great place to start, any place like that. I told my students to look on Craigslist for writing and editing jobs, there used to be an endless supply of writing gigs for writing about bars. Starting a food blog is a good idea as well, when I started several years ago that wasn’t really an option. That is a real possibility to becoming a writer. The journalist Andrea Strong writes StrongBuzz, which is a really good example of that.
I wrote for the yearly “Bar and Club” guide at Time Out New York, and then their quasi-annual “Eating and Drinking” guide. Then I started writing some dining features for the magazine. Then, I got a gig as the New York City guide editor Gayot.com; I’m still doing that on a part-term basis, off and on for the last four years. About two years passed between Shecky’s New York and Gayot. These days, it’s tough to send somebody any place because so few places are hiring freelancers.
Besides the huge body of historical research behind this book, you are also part of a long, fascinating tradition of travel writers as well. Who are your biggest influences? If you were making a creative traveling writing syllabus for people interested in turning vacations into prose, what would you recommend?
I have to say I’ve never been a huge reader of the canon of travel writing — of writing about a place for the sake of writing about a place. I like writers who travel with some other purpose in mind. I wanted to move to this village because it was such an intriguing place.
I was going to move there and write about it, but I didn’t know if it would have a good arc. My wife reminded me about the relic. I studied medieval history in college. Then I had this larger story that transcended the place — that’s the kind of book that I read over and over.
I teach travel writing at New York University, and I have a syllabus of recommended writers. My influences include: Joan Didion Slouching Towards Bethlehem; Susan Orlean, The Bullfighter Checks her Makeup; David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day; Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There; and Jan Morris, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere. There’s also “The Best American Travel Writing” series — that’s more journalistic style. There’s also “The Best Travel Writing” series that’s by Travelers’ Tales — that’s more personal.
You make history vivid and tangible, something that most journalists need to learn. How did you take these days and days of library research and make them come alive? What’s your advice for magazine writers looking to liven up historical passages?
I think one thing that helps [is to] write in a casual conversational tone, as if you were at a bar telling your friends about a historical anecdote. Simon Winchester writes history in a very casual tone. Tony Perrote writes travel books with a huge historical bent; he does a masterful job of making history accessible. It’s kind of that casual tone that helps, and not getting too caught up in academic jargon.
Five tips for success as a travel writer:
1. Move away. The best way to find story ideas and to really get to know a place is to move there.
2. Have a geographical beat. It will keep you easier abreast to that part of the world and, eventually, editors will know you as an expert in that area.
3. Don’t quit your day job. Or at least don’t focus entirely on travel. Write about your other interests and then apply those same interests when you’re traveling.
4. Know the travel writing market. The more you’re familiar with the various columns and sections of travel magazines, the easier it will be to come up with ideas for them and the more knowledgeable you’ll appear when you send a query to editors.
5. Send finished articles to newspaper travel sections. While you generally send pitches to magazines, newspaper travel editors prefer to consider already finished articles. This is good for beginners because it eliminates the necessity of sending published clips writers typically include with their pitches.
Jason Boog is editor of GalleyCat and the host of mediabistro.com’s Morning Media Menu podcast.
Topics:
Mediabistro Archive
