Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
By now, even I could not deny that my story was leaden, and only getting heavier with each
pass. Ilena was confounded by it; I was confounded by it. We trudged ahead, though it felt
like we were trudging backward.
I wrote 11 painfully executed drafts of that goddamn giant squid story—which was sup-
posed to be the easiest thing I'd ever written—and I still wasn't getting any closer to it.
Finally, after the 11th draft, my intelligent and gracious editor, who had always delivered
her criticisms in the most articulate and gentle manner imaginable, became exasperated. She
cracked. I had broken her spirit. She called me up one day and said simply, “Why don't you
try writing this story once more, Liz. Only this time, why don't you see if you can figure out
a way to make it . . . not so boring .”
There it was, the dreadful proof: I was the journalist who had just written (11 times in a
row!) a completely boring story about a mysterious sea creature, an obsessed scientist, and
unexplored crevices in the deepest trenches of the ocean. And the reason my writing was
boring was that I was still laboring under the grave misconception that the story itself was
automatically interesting —in other words, that the story didn't really need me.
Wrong.
No story is automatically interesting; only the telling makes it so. Every narrative needs a
fully engaged narrator. And it was only when I charged myself at last with my proper man-
date as a writer ( to make things interesting ) that my giant squid article at last drew sputtering
breath and came to life. For my kind editors had not sent me to the other side of the planet
to drink beer and hang out with sailors; they had sent me there to infuse marvel into a poten-
tially fascinating tale that only I would be lucky enough to witness with my own eyes. And
once I regained hold of that sense of astonishment—once I inhabited that rightful feeling of
You aren't going to believe what I just saw! —everything lit up at last.
Which brings me to my second point—that there is no story so boring that it cannot, over
time, with the right amount of love and passion and work, be told marvelously.
ThetravelstoriesI'veselectedforthisanthologyaretheonesthatIbelieveweretoldthemost
marvelously in 2012—by which I mean, quite literally, told with the biggest sense of marvel
bywriterswhotookthemostpersonalresponsibilityforinfusingwondermentintotheirtales.
Someofthesestoriesfindtheirauthorsflingingthemselvesintomadactsofdangerandsome
do not, but every piece contains awe in strong enough doses to render the reader enchanted,
delighted, compelled, or forever unsettled.
I read a lot of travel stories in order to select these 19. I sat on a beach under an umbrella
during a long and quiet vacation of my own, with stacks of magazine articles in a big brown
shopping bag next to me. I pulled the stories out of the bag randomly, one after another, like
an endless succession of salty or sweet snacks. I had a vague idea of what I was looking for
(to be transported), but I had no way of anticipating what would transport me. I was pretty
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