There was a moment, a long moment lasting a few days just before Christmas, where I asked myself why I was bothering writing fiction. From the writers’ group I’m in, I know only too well that many, if not most, writers are prone to attacks of self-doubt. Knowing that fact doesn’t make swatting aside the dark destructive cloud any easier.
It took a bit of pondering to get to the root of why I felt like this. One contributory factor was obvious. Circumstances outside of our control meant I wasn’t writing. The more I write, the more confident I feel about it. It’s when I stop the doubts creep in. But that was only a minor factor. The main factor is writing is partly fuelled by feedback, and both Andy and I were used to regular positive feedback when our main focus was travel writing.
Crossing the bridge between Spain and Portugal on the Camino de Santiago.
Every week, we received emails relating to various things we’d written. Readers would comment on our travel websites or on Facebook business pages. This interaction was constant. Even when we create holidays and guides for others, we can see the real impact. Our names might not be attached, but we know what we’ve produced. I can look at reviews of Slow Travel holidays on Inntravel’s website and see how people respond to the guides we’ve helped put together. Just before Christmas, The Guardian published a list of their travel writers’ twenty-four favourite travel finds. One involved a Slow Travel walking holiday we helped pull together in 2021, with the writer commenting one town was ‘my best discovery of the year.’ It doesn’t matter that other writers take some credit for their travel ‘discoveries’ as knowing how people respond to guides we’ve written is reward enough.
Anyway, it’s just the way travel writing generally works. I remember a travel editor of The Times ‘discovering’ the Parador in Teide National Park on Tenerife, one of the most visited spots in the whole of Spain. Immediately before Christmas, we were contacted by another travel writer seeking advice about hiking. This hasn’t been uncommon over the years. We always oblige. Casting bread on the water is a business practice we’ve subscribed to since before our travel writing days. Sometimes you get something back, often you don’t.
The Parador in Teide National Park on Tenerife – really not discovered by the travel editor of a UK broadsheet.
But fiction is a different beast altogether. It is a more solitary affair. And it is a marathon as opposed to a sprint. It takes a long time to write a novel, edit it, edit it again, and again. Then comes the process of deciding what to do with it – having other people read and check it. Then edit again. After that comes the researching potential agents etc. and so on. Basically, months and even years can pass without an end result. Plenty of time for the gremlin to worm its way into heads to taunt ‘what the hell do you think you’re playing at wasting all this time on something that might come to nothing.’ The impact of travel writing is more immediate.
So, imposter syndrome took a firm grip. Then came a brilliant blast of sunshine in the form of an email followed by a comment on one of our websites about my book By the Time Dawn Breaks. The comment was this: “This is a fantastic book. The blend of island facts and the author’s vision of fables is unique. I loved it.”
It was oxygen to a drowning man, a wonderful boost that reminded me that while fiction feedback is nowhere near the same volume as with travel writing, it feels far, far more precious when it comes.
I enjoy travel writing, but it doesn’t give me anything like the same satisfaction as writing fiction.
