Paul Theroux probably never took a travel writing course. As far as I know, neither did Chatwin. Or Thubron. But Anthony Bourdain did. Not travel writing, as such, but he studied writing in New York and was heavily influenced by his teachers, according to his oral biography. Some great writers studied writing. Some great writers didn’t. If you listen to the Travel Writing Podcast, you’ll find cases of those who did on their own, and others for whom a well-chosen course was the key that finally unlocked a door they had been banging on for years.
Teaching writing is, in some ways, inherently contradictory. To teach, you show others how to do something in a specific, proven way. There are correct ways to fly a plane, and incorrect ways. Two skilled pilots will follow identical steps and distinguish themselves through judgement and dependability, not uniqueness. To succeed as a writer, you must produce something that no one has produced before.
When Writing Courses Risk Holding Writers Back
The danger of writing courses is that they teach you simply to imitate others, and/or load your mind up with so many rules and techniques that you freeze up before the blank page. For a certain kind of earnest creative, this risks stifling the creative spark that drove you to the page in the first place. There’s a cliché that a writer is someone for whom writing is harder than it is for everyone else. And indeed, we are the ones still typing the old-fashioned way, one keystroke at a time, where everyone else just uses AI. Courses, at their best, should unlock a writer’s passion, not make writing even harder than it already is.
Writing is harder for writers than for non-writers because we care. And that caring is the greatest pathway to creating something that matters. That very fear or frustration you feel is not what is holding you back, but what will allow you to dig deeper and create something of greater value than those who don’t care and who see writing as merely copying and pasting. The fact that you are considering improving your skills through a writing course or elsewhere also puts you a cut above. Many of the worst writers believe that they are infallible, and that, if they are not praised and rewarded, then the world is simply not capable of recognizing their genius. They will never make an effort to learn, because they don’t think they need to. You are different.
Sometimes Writing Feedback Helps, Sometimes it Doesn’t
Some writing courses offer writing feedback, which is extremely valuable at times but also fraught and risky. Feedback from peers, especially those who like you and wish to bond with you, will always be complementary even if your piece does not yet deserve it. Feedback you get from your friends will also be colored by their personal knowledge of you. They will have a level of warmth and context that a stranger, encountering a story of yours in a magazine or on a bookshelf, would not typically have. This means they will care about people and details that most of your actual readers would not. This is why a story may be praised sincerely by friends, but critiqued much more harshly by an editor.
Writing is highly subjective, and feedback that cuts through is feedback that is structured for a specific purpose. If an editor, who evaluates pieces for publication every day, explains what is working and what isn’t, this is actionable data you can use to advance toward publication. This is the kind of feedback we offer on our Craft of Travel Writing Certificate course.
Learning From the Masters is Not Always a Good Idea
A Paris Review article by Frederick Tuten laments how dreadful and disengaged the wonderful writer Paul Bowles was as a teacher. To students desperate for his feedback, he would only give grammatical corrections, nothing more. It’s a case study of why the best writers do not always make the best teachers. I am not saying you shouldn’t learn from the greats; you absolutely should. But be cautious. Great writers often become great by shedding the very structures and best practices that the rest of us mere mortals need in order to get our point across. They are unlikely to have the patience or the interest to teach the training wheels they themselves have abandoned, and imitating another’s genius will make most normal writers simply seem incoherent. You are not Hemingway, and you shouldn’t try to write like him.
When I lived in China, I found it strangely easier to understand mandarin spoken by my fellow western learners than by the heavily-accented native speakers I would encounter on the streets of Chengdu, Often, it is easier to learn from someone a couple of steps ahead of you in the journey, than from someone who is miles down the road and has already forgotten what things looked like when you were just starting out. One of the most praised episodes of the Travel Writing Podcast is Phillip Thomas, who explains in great detail how he got his first paid stories published just recently. This fresh, raw experience gives a roadmap that you can actually follow.
I’ve evaluated thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of stories and manuscripts over many years as an editor and publisher. It’s easy to tell if a writer gets it, if they understand the fundamental best practices of the art. It’s also easy to tell if they are students of the publication to which they are pitching. Skilled writers understand how to adapt their own style and voice to the required tone, structure, and sensibility of a publication and its readers. Some writers have this knowledge of the reader intuitively. Some learn it by studying the greats over years and noticing their own reactions, and reverse-engineering from there. Others gain this knowledge in a structured context through a writing course. All are valid pathways.
Writing Courses Can Teach ‘Soft’ Skills That Go Beyond Writing
There’s a whole other dimension to good travel writing courses beyond the travel writing itself, which is the business and networking side. These are much simpler skills to teach; an editor can explain the kind of pitches they look for, a writer can break down their system for strategically approaching publications and knowing what to send to whom. This is much more objective than writing; two writers can use the same system to organize their pitches and rank prospective publications, whereas two writers could never write the exact same story without sacrificing everything that makes a piece worth reading.
Some aspects of writing, too, are more objective and easier to quantify than others. The way a scene is set. The way a story is structured. The way information is handed out to a reader. These are all measurable skills that a writer can learn. If they are laid out clearly, with examples and explanations, in the structure of a course, with an instructor on hand to answer questions and provide context, it can save years off a writer’s educational journey.
Editors appreciate writers who can deliver a work that seems professional and polished (i.e follows conventions and best practices) while at the same time being unique (i.e, subverting cliché and offering insight and emotion that cannot be found elsewhere). This apparent contradiction, between formula and freedom, is one that all writers will need to wrestle with and find their own resolution to.
So, Should You Take That Travel Writing Course?
A travel writing course can succeed if it equips you with specific skills to help accomplish a specific goal. As a travel writing publication, we select stories that convey a narrative in a style that is gripping, insightful, and enduring; stories that will be just as compelling in 10 or 15 years as they are on the day they are written. The travel writing course we offer, our Travel Writing Certificate, equips students with the very skills to succeed at this particular style of writing, which is why graduates often go on to get published on Intrepid Times and other narrative-focused platforms.
A better way to formulate this question could be: What is the best structure that allows you to deliver your unique voice in a way that editors, readers, and publishers will respond to? For some writers, a course may be the right way to help you get there.
