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Had a lovely time in beautiful Britain? Family travel writing contest call for submissions

The Have a Lovely Time family travel and activities website is calling for submissions in a travel writing competition celebrating Beautiful Britain.

The family travel writing contest has a top prize of £200, a second prize of a weekend stay at the Park Inn in historic York and 10 English Heritage family passes for everyone finishing in the top ten, as well as a copy of Travelling with Children, by Catherine Cooper, one of the competition’s judges.

There’s also a mystery prize on offer for the entry voted readers’ favourite after the competition closes on October 1, 2011.

We want to celebrate all that’s great about family tourism in our stunning land. That might include breathtaking  adventures in the Lakes, laughing til your sides ache at a family-friendly Edinburgh festival, savouring the splendour of the West Wales coastline, a Devon cream tea or a knees up at a holiday park…or of course plenty more.

Case study request: Getting into difficulties abroad with no insurance

I'M looking for the following to help with some reports in the media designed to help readers avoid a similar experience. I need two British case studies which fit the following criteria. There is a fee of £100 for each.

The more recent the experience, the better.

Details: British nationals who have got into difficulty abroad while staying with a friend or family member. Very often people travelling to stay with a friend/family abroad don’t prepare in the same way they would if they were staying in a hotel. Often the mind-set is that “it’s a different type of holiday” and they consider steps like taking out a travel insurance policy or researching the destination not to be necessary, especially if the traveller is really familiar with their destination (i.e. if they travel to Spain a couple of times a year to visit their parents). The ideal case study here would be someone who has been handed a large medical bill because they got ill/were injured abroad and were not covered by a travel insurance policy.

 

Please email me linda[at]passionatemedia.co.uk if you can help as it applies to you.

In your email, please:

• Tell me your full name and confirm you are happy to be named and pictured

• Tell me your age, where you live and provide a contact email address and phone number, plus an indication of when's best to get in touch

• Give me a brief outline of why you feel your story fits - the aim of these pieces will be to help others avoid similar difficulties

 

Thanks very much to anyone who can help, should more people than are needed get in touch, forgive me but I can only use two and please bear with me in getting back to you.

Travel writing tips by author and journalist Catherine Cooper

LAST week when I rounded up some travel writing opportunities, I had in mind that it could also be useful to include some tips on what to write.

Here, journalist and author Catherine Cooper shares some guidance with us. Catherine has written about travel for newspapers, magazines and websites.

Catherine's book, Travelling With Children, a Parent's Guide, is out now and is packed with information for the family traveller -- however adventurous they are feeling.

It's available from all good book shops and through Amazon here:

Travelling With Children: A Parent's Guide (Need 2 Know)

Catherine also has her own fantastic blog at Travelling with children.

A beginner's guide to travel writing opportunities

 
OPPORTUNITIES for features from unproven contributors in renowned publications' travel sections are few and far between. Many mainstream media organisations will share travel gigs in-house, favour celebrity contributions or not pay.

There are plenty of highly experienced travel journalists who may already have written for leading publications who regularly find their suggestions for features rejected or ignored. Now more than ever.

Busy editors are inundated with pitches from established and wannabe travel hacks. So if you're  determined to make it as a travel journalist, be prepared for a bumpy ride littered with rejections.

A big misconception about travel writing is that it’s an easy way to make a living. You have to do other things to pay the mortgage.

Commissions drying up so I started a blog: How we've got on so far

ARE you being told there's no budget for UK travel features? So ran a recent question on the Journobiz forum.

The answer from the forum's resident travel writers was pretty much a resounding "yes."

In February 2008, I reported the following for Press Gazette: What were the chances of building a career in this competitive field for anyone who fancied it?

Author, journalist and trainer Dea Birkett said:

Forget it. The biggest misconception about travel writing is that it’s an easy way to make a living. You have to do other things to pay the mortgage.

Think you know mummybloggers? Think again

I'VE been reading a bit about how PRs are engaging with bloggers lately and some of the discussion has either been sparked by or led to mentions of a recent trip I shared with six other so-called UK 'mummybloggers' to Walt Disney World.

See this forward thinking post from travel journalist Jeremy Head and this interesting piece by Manchester's Sarah Hartley to see what I mean.

Susanna, from A Modern Mother, recently shared guidance for PRs wanting to contact this group of bloggers and I have been meaning to add my thoughts on her excellent post for a while. The one point I disagreed on was that I write for other people, not for me.

How I use social media to survive and diversify

THE Black Country Social Media Cafe is described as a place for people interested in social media to gather, get acquainted, chat, plot, scheme, and share.

I attended the first meeting a few weeks back when guest speakers Pete Ashton and Chris Unitt outlined lessons learned on a visit to SXSW.

At the next meeting, to be held on Tuesday, May 12, at 2.30pm in the Alchemy Bar in Wolverhampton city centre, there'll be a chance for members to say a little about who they are and what they do, with a particular emphasis on how they have been able to use social media in their work.

It's unclear whether I am going to be able to make it to the next meeting, because of a work commitment. Nevertheless, I have been thinking about how our work has been transformed by social media, so am posting here about its impact on my professional life. As I think about tomorrow's JEE Camp, I also thought it would be useful to pull some of my experience together in this way.

Overall, I'd say that a growing knowledge of social media has allowed me to:

* Survive and diversify in my chosen career.

* Make and strengthen new contacts whom I never would have met previously.

* Improve ways of finding, researching and completing existing work

* Find new income streams - both directly and indirectly through blogging but also in offering my services to help others get to grips with the concept of social media and understand that it's not about technology for the sake of it 

* Better promote my work across various disciplines

Real Travel - a lovely looking magazine to launch a travel writing portfolio

HERE'S a message I was forwarded by a contact from the editor of Real Travel magazine. I hope it may be useful to anyone whose ambitions lie in that field:

“All we really ask for when people send in their ideas to Real Travel is enthusiasm. That and a unique idea that stands out from the rest. The only ‘rules’ we have is that you’re talking about a trip taken within the last year, that you have a good selection of colour photos that we can use and that you’re passionate about the story you’re telling.
Start by sending us a 200-word summary of your piece, giving an idea of where you went and why you want to share it with others. Then, along with two or three photos, send it in and don’t forget to include your age and details of how to contact you.”

Check out the website and back copies for the sort of features they are looking for, plus relevant contact details.

JournoBiz travel writing workshop

THIS just in from Jan Murray:

Fancy waking up at dawn on a remote river beach in the African interior, kayaking around rocky islets in the Outer Hebrides, testing out the fluffiness of pillows and the smoothness of Egyptian cotton sheets practically anywhere in the world you care to venture - and getting paid for it?

Travel writing workshop with Dea Birkett and Rory Maclean

Now I can write about our fun on the beach.

YESTERDAY I laughed, cried and sent myself a postcard.
And how often can you say that, exactly? I'm now a graduate of a travel writing workshop run by esteemed authors and journalists Dea Birkett and Rory Maclean.
At turns encouraging, challenging, surprising and entertaining, it was an unforgettable day.
There's plenty about what the course involves on its website but I just wanted to pass on a personal recommendation.