Write Your Travel Memoirs
Sarah E. White, 2010. 100 pages.
“Travel. It leaves you speechless, then it makes you a storyteller.”
Writing a travel memoir is a spectacular opportunity to practice the craft of creative nonfiction writing, as well as to discover new perspectives on your life. With the help of this book, you will explore writing character and place descriptions, staging scenes, and conveying lessons learned. You’ll work on transforming your travel experiences into autobiographical essays suitable for sharing with friends and family, or submitting for publication.
What’s the secret to writing stories others will find compelling? After you read this book you’ll know the answer. You’ll also have an outline for your travel memoir and a solid plan for writing it.
I developed this curriculum for an online course I’ve offered through Story Circle Network, an online resource for women with stories to tell. I have also taught it in local groups, an outgrowth of my general-focus memoir workshops. This book makes an ideal text for writing classes.
What’s inside?
Five how-to chapters, each with exercises to prepare you for writing your travel memoir.
1. The Outbound Journey: why write, who for, and what to write about.
2. The Traveler and Companions: bring people to life.
3. Settings; Where the Stories Live: make places come alive.
4. Staging the Action in Your Anecdotes: give focus to your story, increase the drama.
5. Coming Home: find the meaning in your travel memories.
Appendix: resources to help you keep writing.
BONUS! Sarah White’s travel memoir, Finding Our Place in Cinque Terre.
About the Author:
Sarah E. White has taught reminiscence writing to small groups in Madison, Wisconsin since 2004. She began teaching online for Story Circle Network in 2009. A published author of several business how-to books, Sarah entered the memoir genre in 2008 with the publication of “The Plunge” in My Words Are Gonna Linger, an anthology from Personal History Press. A frequent traveler with a crush on Italy, Sarah now helps others write through her memoir-coaching business, First Person Productions.
Praise for Sarah’s “Write Your Travel Memoir” course:
I learned basics of writing travel memoir—techniques for gathering material on the road, finding the story within the story, organizing and writing the memoir. When I leave for vacation next month, I’ll be taking what I’ve learned in Sarah White’s course along with me. —Kathy W., Austin TX
Although I have a degree in creative writing, I learned a lot from Sarah White’s style of outlining and writing. —Elizabeth F., Ogden UT
Forty years of travel + writer’s block. Sarah unlocked my creativity and off I went! —Marg S., Madison WI
Read a review by Story Circle Network’s Judy Miller here.
True Stories Well Told 