Tim Cahill regales Book Passage travel writers with adventure stories and writing advice

Thursday night, Don George kicked off the Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference, held in the Bay Area, with an event featuring adventure travel writer Tim Cahill. Cahill, author of nine books including “Jaguars Ripped My Flesh,” “Pass the Butterworms: Remote Journeys Oddly Rendered” and “Hold the Enlightenment,” talked about his career from his first published piece for a local Bay Area magazine, for which he teamed up with an artist friend to write an article about turkey vultures, to the beginnings of Outside magazine, and finally to his most harrowing travel experience: an episode in the Queen Charlotte Islands where he ventured off on his own, fell off a moss-covered wall, and used survival skills through bush and ocean to be found by his fellow kayakers. Since many of Cahill’s books cover stories of a much higher danger level, it was his infectious humor that brought the story to life.

His advice was simple, “If you can make people real damn mad, make them laugh or cry, you’ll get into that book,” he said to an audience of more than 100 people, most attending the conference to learn to become travel writers or to advance their writing careers. “Take your experience and connect it to some larger goal, take the story and make it build to an emotional climax.”

Or you could take Cahill’s approach and go to places so remote that little has been written about them and then all you have to do is report what’s there.

I won’t lie, this is the man whose writing in Outside magazine in the early ’90s inspired me to get started in travel writing and I’ve seen him speak several times. Last night’s event was one of my favorites.

– Jen Leo, Los Angeles Times Travel & Deal blogger

[Photo: Jen Leo / For the Los Angeles Times]

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 15, 2008 at 10:48 am by Jen Leo and is filed under News, Tips & Advice, Outdoors & Adventure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.