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My Experience of Teaching a Travel Writing Course
I’ve been pretty fortunate to have the opportunity to teach a course called Special Topics in Travel Writing at Stevenson University, where I am a full-time professor. It’s one of my favorite courses to teach, and for years in another course I teach called Feature Writing, we cover travel writing as part of the curriculum. To be able to teach travel writing as a semester-long, intensive 400-level course is something I treasure. The students in my class are required to each pick a location relatively local to our region. Some explore cities or towns in Maryland, some in Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware, Washington, D.C. or any other destination that they…
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How I’ve STARTED WITH WHY and the times I LOST MY WHY
*** Simon Sinek was able to take things we all think or have thought in the business world and world of creative leadership and make sense of it. He rationalized it all in a way that makes sense to us. I found myself nodding and giving him silent “Amens” as I read along, chapter by chapter, immersed in the question he started asking himself about successful leaders and organizations: How do they achieve the level of success? How do they begin? They start with WHY. As I read, I became more inspired with each story, example, and principle underscored and highlighted by Sinek. I haven’t read a book since Elizabeth…
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Handling the Insecurities of Publishing A Novel
*** It’s a challenging endeavor. I’ve done it twice now with fiction, and twice with nonfiction books. And I’m about to do it again when I release my latest, third fictional novel. There will always be anxieties that manifest themselves into insecurities about putting our work out there. The tendency to feel nervous about it is normal. We’ve invested a lot of time and energy into our stories, and we hope people will appreciate that time and energy regarding our work, too. But there are no guarantees. Some people will love it, some will think it’s just okay, and some will downright dislike it. It’s the way of the world,…
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Yes, You Are Creative
I can’t tell you how many times in my advertising and writing classes I teach at the university that I hear students tell me that they are not creative, or that they just don’t have a lot of creativity in their bones. As someone who has been teaching for over 25 years, I think I can safely say at this point that people underestimate their power to be creative, and that more often than not, they are quite capable of creating something that is better than they expected. All they need is a push and someone to convincingly tell them that they’ve got creativity brewing inside them. I’m currently reading…
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Just For Today, I’m Feeling A Little Like Elizabeth Gilbert
* * * Here’s the thing: Today, I am feeling a little like Elizabeth Gilbert. I admire Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love and the current hit The Signature of All Things) tremendously and had the privilege of hearing her speak as well when she was a keynote for Stevenson’s Speaker Series a few years. She’s a great inspiration, and her piece on TED about creativity is one of my all-time favorites. My classes can attest to this, because I make them watch it every semester. Gilbert regularly posts photos of her book in lovely settings from all over the world. Readers send them to her. It’s a very…
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Proud of My Travel Writers
* * * The semester is over, and now the students are taking final exams. I have completed teaching a Special Topics in Local Travel Writing course in our Business Communication department at Stevenson University, and I have one thing to say. I loved it. As any form of travel is wont to do, a true travel experience tends to have the ability to open our minds—and our hearts. My students were posed the task of traveling like a travel writer, spending two days in their selected place of choice, and then writing about it. I have to say, the topics were varied and interesting. Each student put his or…
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On Happiness—Duh?
My travel writing class is watching “Eat, Pray, Love” this week. We are taking a little respite from reading travel stories to watching one (though I am having them read an excerpt from her book as well). The point I am trying to make is this: Don’t watch a film about traveling if you are not traveling. It will only make you want to travel, and then you’ll be miserable because you’ll be wishing you could experience something new and exciting and exotic. Don’t get me wrong, I love my students, and I adore teaching this class. I am learning along with them, but am also imparting some of my…
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Brushing Up Against Mad Creativity
Look around you. Seriously, look around you. Everything you see came from someone, but more importantly it started out as simply a creative idea. We’ve all had those moments when creativity is a spark, when it burns brightly, then fades away. We’ve also has those moments when creativity is a fire, burning brightly and furiously, and it stays with you and things start to happen. For the last few days in advertising class, we’ve talked about creativity, where it comes from, and how it blesses us at times and curses us at other times. But the truth is, in creative fields, where ideas are important and making things work is…
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Eat (pizza), Pray (you’ll lose weight), Love (your muffin) and Buy New Jeans
I pulled out my copy of Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert because, as you’ve seen, my class has been reading works by travel writers. Although Gilbert is not a travel writer per se, her book is one of self-discovery, and she comes to many realizations about herself through the travel and culture she experiences in Italy, India, and Indonesia. I read a passage out loud today in class as a means of writing inspiration (though how successful I was is left to be seen). Ironically, the movie was on my television, and I watched a bit of it earlier. Having already seen the film when it was released in…
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A Big, Blue Bottle of Creativity To Go, Please.
Last fall, Elizabeth Gilbert visited Baltimore as part of Stevenson University’s Speaker Series that takes place at the Meyerhoff in Baltimore. I was excited to attend as I had read Eat, Pray, Love, and also had recently seen the film. Additionally, I had forced my feature writing students to watch a clip from Ted.com in class where Elizabeth Gilbert talks about creativity—and how and where to find it. As I was in the midst of completing my first-ever novel for my MFA thesis, I needed all the inspiration I could get. One of the things Gilbert talked about at the Meyerhoff was that she knew she was a writer ever…
