You become a better writer by writing. You become a better travel writer by writing about travel.

The dirty little secret about adventure writing is that something has to go wrong.

For me, to find a place that doesn't have an organized tour going to it is becoming more and more difficult. A lot of times it involves danger of a political nature - places where the adventure-travel trips can't go because they can't get any liability insurance.

There's a story everywhere. Being bored to death someplace is basically a funny proposition. What you have to watch out for is you don't write a boring story about a boring place.

The way one approaches a wilderness story is to fashion a quest - find something that you are truly interested in finding or discovering.

Publishing your work is important. Even if you are giving a piece to some smaller publication for free, you will learn something about your writing. The editor will say something, friends will mention it. You will learn.

Editors, for the most part, don't care ''what'' you've done, or how astounding the physical event may have been. You need to write well. Many others are capable of doing what you have done (probably), so you must write better than they.