This is part two of a two-part post on Doug Mack, a graphic designer whose trip to cliche-ridden Europe turned into a Penguin-published travel memoir. Read part one.
It started when Doug Mack found a 1963 travel guide of Europe and took off when he added love letters his mother had written in the same period to the man who became his father. Then Mack’s Europe on Five Wrong Turns released in April. He discusses the evolution of travel in the past 50 years in part one of this two-part post. In part two he talks about turning his experiences into a travel memoir published by a Penguin imprint. Read what he says about the blog-as-published conundrum, charting your narrative arc, travel writing rules, and more.
Read an Excerpt of Doug Mack's Travel Memoir
Was your approach to getting published the same as exploring another continent?
“No. In the first rule of travel writing: Be able to walk and write at the same time.
“Second rule of travel writing: Be able to decipher your notes later.
“Third rule of travel writing: Understand that Rule Two will, in the end, take more time and energy than you think.
“I mean those rules both literally and metaphorically. I try very hard not to let my note-taking take over my day or alter the course of my activities or interactions, but I also try to jot down at least a couple of words about everything remotely interesting. Don’t worry about what it means or anything like that; just scrawl down enough information to jog your memory later.
“At the end of the day, I look at my notes and panic. There’s way too much to work with, I can’t see how all the pieces fit together, and I’m hesitant to let go of even one insight or anecdote or factoid. A day or two later, I look back with fresh eyes, and I can start to see what’s important and what’s not. That part takes hours—note-taking is easy; writing a cohesive story is hard.
“Some of those notes should come before you even embark on the trip. Have a plan for getting your story, whatever it is. In my case, I intentionally didn’t do a lot of planning, because that was part of my story: semi-aimless wandering, guided only by my wits and an outdated guidebook. But if you’re working on a story about, say, Mongolian restaurants in Bermuda, then before you go, you’d better make some contacts in Bermuda so that you can get the interviews and do the research to get to the bottom of the story. Know your angle and let that guide your planning.”
(Mack was interviewed by Alexis Grant on her insightful travel-writing blog, and brought out the big guns— a graph of his narrative arc. It may not be the bikini graph made popular on The Rachel Maddow Show but this kind of chart will expedite any writer’s process.)
Many ATW readers are writers. Some want to become travel writers. What are some tips?
First rule of travel writing: Be able to walk and write at the same time.
Second rule of travel writing: Be able to decipher your notes later.
Third rule of travel writing: Understand that Rule Two will, in the end, take more time and energy.
What about extended formats– such as long trips or long-form writing?
I mean those rules both literally and metaphorically. My general approach to writing—travel or otherwise—is to do way too much research and note-taking and ill-formed-idea-thinking. I try very hard not to let my note-taking take over my day or alter the course of my activities or interactions, but I also try to jot down at least a couple of words about everything remotely interesting. I don’t worry about what it means or anything like that, I just scrawl down enough information to jog my memory later, and then I keep going.
Eventually, though, a day or two later, I look back with fresh eyes, and I can start to see the what’s important and what’s not. That part takes hours—note-taking is easy; writing a cohesive story is hard.
In my case, I intentionally didn’t do a lot of planning, because that was part of my story: semi-aimless wandering, a lot of making it up as I went along, guided only by my wits and an outdated guidebook. But if you’re working on a story about, say, Mongolian restaurants in Bermuda, then before you go, you’d better make some contacts in Bermuda so that you can get the interviews and do the research to get to the bottom of the story. Know your angle, and let that guide your planning.
Many writers are confounded with the blog-means-published conundrum. Did you have any problems with your agent or publisher because you’d already had much of the content on your blog?
“This really wasn’t an issue, although I very intentionally kept the best stories and strongest arguments off of the blog, because I was mindful of this potential problem. I don’t want to get into the semantic debate about being a blogger versus being a writer, but I view my blog as a supplement to my paid writing. As such, I consider it a forum for telling stories that aren’t in the book or that I otherwise wouldn’t get paid to write, or as a place for me to hash out some vague notes about the ideas going around in my mind. The blog is like the extras on a DVD: outtakes and supplementary material, which might give you an impressionistic, scattered idea of the final product but is very different from (and lacks the highlights and connective tissue of) the carefully-composed main narrative.
“One piece, about visiting the Anne Frank House, was originally written for the blog, then slightly tweaked for the San Francisco Chronicle— which knew I’d used the material on the blog— and then slightly tweaked again for the book, although the edits weren’t major and the content was essentially the same in each version. No one cared. If there had had been more instances of this, more direct overlap between the blog and the book, that probably would have been a problem.
“My recommendation is that if you know you want to write a book about something, you can offer a teaser about it on your blog, but don’t give it all away. Give people enough to want to read more, and then trust that they’ll go find those stories when you’re ready to share them.”
Read Mack in The San Francisco Chronicle and WorldHum or an excerpt of his book, published by Perigee/Penguin. Or check out part one of the Doug Mack Q/A.
