How to write an adventure travel book
Everything I learned writing my book: finding a publisher, the editing process, deciding what to include, the hardest parts
I wanted to write a book long before I wanted to go on an adventure. Apparently I first told my mum I was going to write one when I was five years old and, frankly, I still feel pretty chuffed it only took me another 24 years to realise that dream.
Writing a book is the second best thing I’ve ever done (after the adventure itself). Coasting was published in July 2021 and, without wanting to over-egg it, it did kind of change my life. I want to write more about the experience as a whole and figured it might be helpful to start by covering the nuts and bolts of book writing (or how I found it at least). I asked for some questions on Instagram and these are what I’ll be answering today, a comprehensive guide to everything from finding a publisher, how I planned my book, deciding what to cut out and leave in, how long it took to write, pacing the story, the editing process and dealing with the fact that some people won’t like your work.
My answers are based on my experience writing Coasting, an adventure travel memoir about my 5,000 mile around the British coast. When I eventually finish my car-free adventures book I’ll do a separate post about guidebook writing as I’m finding that a very different experience. I’m also running a virtual How To Get Into Adventure Writing workshop on June 19th if you’d like more on this topic.
This is a bit of a beast of a post so grab a cup of tea and I guess we’ll get started…
How to write an adventure travel book
How did the process of finding a publisher work?
I had heard a lot of horror stories about how hard it is to find a publisher. You see those stats about how Harry Potter got rejected however many times before somebody took a punt on it, or how publishers turn down 95% of manuscripts etc etc etc. I loved the idea of writing a book but figured it was probably a bit of a pipe dream.
My experience actually ended up being a little different. Back in 2016, while I was actually doing my run around the coast, Debbie (who ended up being my editor) got in touch from Summersdale and said that she liked my blog and had I thought about a writing book. I was THRILLED by this email, excitedly said yes… and then proceeded to not really get on with writing anything for the next five years (more on that below). But this connection was obviously very useful when I did finally start writing. I dusted off my several-years-old email chain with Debbie, asked if Summersdale would still be interested in reading something from me and luckily she said yes. I put together a proposal and some sample chapters and they offered me a book deal - all remarkably straightforward.
Perhaps it would have made more business sense to shop around for publishers but I was just so excited that anybody wanted to publish my book that I didn’t want to jinx it. Also, as I was still working full time then, getting a bigger upfront advance didn’t feel as important to me as it might now (when I’m more reliant on this whole thing to pay my rent). I don’t have any regrets - I loved working with Summersdale and felt really supported. They’re a smaller publishers and I liked that because I felt like I got a lot of input when it came to cover design, marketing, etc in a way perhaps you don’t when you’re a small new author fish in the big pond of one of the major publishers.
It was undeniably helpful having that contact with Debbie but hopefully her initial email offers some reassurance that editors are out there actively looking for good books to publish! Ultimately publishers want to sell books and I think that showcasing your writing via a blog, newsletter, on social media etc and demonstrating there’s an audience for it can surely only ever be beneficial. When she got in touch I didn’t have a huge social media following and I definitely didn’t have any existing connections to the publishing industry. There is always a bit of good luck and timing involved though. I was working on Coasting in the midst of the pandemic when overseas travel was limited, so a book about UK adventure was quite timely.
Do you need an agent to get a book deal?
I haven’t had one for either of mine (Coasting or my car-free adventures guidebook which I’m writing at the moment for Vertebrate Publishing). For both of those, I’ve worked directly with the publisher. However, not all publishing houses will accept direct proposals. As far as I understand it, lots of the bigger publishers will only accept submissions via an agent, whereas smaller publishers are more likely to without.
The benefit of an agent is that they do all the awkward negotiations for you, can often get you a better deal, will help you with your proposal, make sure the contract is fair… etc. This is obviously super valuable however, in my case I’ve worked with smaller publishers with limited budgets and I don’t feel like I would have got much more by having an agent, yet they then take a cut of the pie (normally around 15% I think). I definitely would consider approaching one in the future or if I was struggling to get an ‘in’ with a publisher.
If you’re submitting directly to a publishers, for non-fiction books you typically need three sample chapters and then an accompanying proposal (slightly different to fiction where you normally need a completed first draft). My Coasting proposal consisted of an overview of my adventure and what the book was going to be about, a chapter outline and a pitch about why I thought the book would sell, e.g. information about my current audience/social media following, some market research about similar books, target audience, etc. Google will give you loads of help for structuring your proposal or try this as a starting point.
How long did it take you to write it?
First I spent three and a half years post-adventure gaining some perspective on the whole experience, regularly thinking “perhaps I could write book about this” and then opening a fresh Word document approx. once every six months and half-heartedly writing a couple of hundred words… but never getting any further. I’m sure lots of amazing adventure and travel books have been written soon after their authors finished their trips (which would definitely come with its advantages e.g. you could remember everything more clearly) but, for me, I think that period of not writing was essential. It took me a while to work out how I actually felt about the whole thing and I don’t think I’d have felt comfortable being so honest if I’d tried to write about it any sooner. Write from the scar, not the wound and all.
Once I actually began working on it properly, it took me around a year from start to finish. In April 2020 I was put on furlough from my then-job and figured if I didn’t have a crack at writing the book now (while not working but still being paid and it being basically illegal to leave the house) then I was never going to. I spent a couple of months writing and perfecting my sample chapters and working on my proposal, which I sent to Summersdale. They offered me a book deal in July 2020 and my first draft deadline was in November. My furlough period had ended at this point so I spent a couple of months procrastinating on the book while still working before eventually being made redundant at the end of September. I then used my notice period (which I didn’t have to actually work) to finish the book. I had actually picked up some other freelance work at this point so it was a pretty full on couple of months, especially when I changed tact halfway through my draft and was essentially left with 50,000 words to write in about two weeks. It all worked out okay though and I handed in my manuscript at the beginning of December, only a few weeks late on my deadline.
That was the hard bit done. The following few months included several rounds of edits (more on those below) plus back and forth on things like cover design, page layout, subtitles and the blurb. In March 2021 the proof copy landed through my letterbox and I got to hold a book I’d written in my hands for the first time which was basically the most exciting thing to ever happen to me!
It was fortuitous timing that I ended having those periods where I could concentrate on writing thanks to furlough and redundancy. It is obviously completely possible to write a book around other commitments (especially if you’re a slightly more efficient person than me, I imagine) but I think any big creative project would definitely be easier if you’re able to carve out time to focus on it. Carrot Quinn wrote a great piece about how she makes a living off of writing in which she talks about this.
How did you plan the book?
You probably won’t be surprised to hear that I’m not much of a planner but I actually did a surprising amount for Coasting. As part of my book proposal I put together a chapter-by-chapter outline, which basically chronologically ran through the adventure. Then before I started properly writing, I went through and bulked out these brief chapter descriptions and decided exactly which stories to included in each one. It was pretty simple though, just in a word doc. I always see people doing lots of fancy things with white boards and lots of post its but I think that would have confused me!
As you write after the event, how do you recall all the detail that you need to put in? Did you keep a diary?
I found being unable to recollect some details, due to the passage of time between going on my adventure and writing about it, both a challenge and a help. Deciding what not to include is one of the hardest things so it was almost useful to have forgotten some things. I guess it was quite self-selecting - if I couldn’t properly remember something then it clearly wasn’t that important.
Something that was helpful though was having all my video diaries, social media posts and blogs to look back through. They didn’t cover all the behind the scenes but it was enough to jog my memory. I made a giant spreadsheet with a tab for every month and a row for every day and then added in where I started and finished each day, how far I ran, who I stayed with and anything notable that happened, piecing it all together from those old posts.
The main thing I struggled to remember was specifics about the scenery. Lots of Debbie’s notes during the editing process were along the lines of “a bit more description please!” If I’m being honest, this just isn’t my area of interest. I love being in a beautiful landscape and moving through it but I’m not someone who takes in the intricacies of every plant or peak, nor do I like reading about these in too much detail. But, knowing now that you do need a bit of this to make a good book, I’d probably try to make some more detailed notes on this aspect if I ever did another adventure I thought I might write about.
How many notes do you take whilst undertaking any adventure? Do you keep a diary or similar for the book?
As you can probably gather from the above answer, I didn’t keep a diary while running around the coast. Firstly, I didn’t know I’d end up writing a book about it and, secondly, I didn’t really have the energy or mental capacity on top of running every day, managing the logistics and sharing on social media.
One strange outcome of writing a book is that now, during any life event or memorable moment, I do have this nagging thought in the back of my mind that it could one day become a plot point for a future story. I still don’t keep a diary but I do often chuck random thoughts into the notes app on my phone just in case. These notes are absolute chaos though so good luck to me trying to decipher them if I ever write another memoir.
It’s a tricky thing to balance. Ultimately, I do believe that in most instances the adventure should always come first and any potential content you might make should come second. I could have stringently kept a diary on the coast but I was happier spending my diary writing time chatting to the people I was staying with or just getting an early night, and personally I feel okay having potentially sacrificed a percentage of book quality for that.
What was the editing process like?
My approach to writing essentially involved dumping all the words onto the page without thinking too hard about them. Most authors will tell you that your first draft should basically be terrible and I think this is true, otherwise you just get stuck tinkering with the first 1000 words forever. Once I’d got 80,000 words down, I then went back through and edited it myself to make it slightly less terrible before sending it to my editor, Debbie.
Debbie then read through my manuscript and the formal editing process began. First you have the structural edit, making sure the book makes sense as a whole and focuses on improving the story arc, character development, etc. Then you move onto line editing, ensuring everything works on a sentence level. This might mean improving descriptions, ironing out inconsistencies and making sure the tone is right. Next it’s copyediting which tidies up the grammar, spelling and punctuation and involves much less back and forth between you and the editor. Lastly it’s proofreading to pick up on any last errors and make sure the paragraph spacing, line indentations etc are all correct. This whole process took about five months for Coasting.
How do you balance enough between sharing enough about yourself without ruining the plot?
I knew that the more personal aspects were an important part of my story so I never really considered that they would ruin the plot. My favourite books to read are along these lines but I know it’s not for everyone (as some Amazon reviewers have not held back on telling me). You’ve got to write the book you want to write though and forget about pleasing everybody.
I tried to weave these elements through organically and intersperse them with the adventure, rather than having the whole backstory in one chunk. For instance, if something happened on the run and my decision in that moment or feelings about it were based around something that had happened previously, then I’d sort of flashback to a past memory.
Your editor should help you get the right balance here though. Ensuring you’ve got a good mix of personal and adventure will likely form part of the structural edit.
How do you know what pace to set the book at as it follows your route?
I think all long-distance adventures are ultimately going to involve quite a lot of repetition and boring bits, which can be what makes writing about them in an interesting way difficult. To avoid this I tried to space out stories a bit, e.g. if two quite similar things happened, say first in Cornwall and then again in Scotland but I already had lots of good stories in Cornwall, I’d save that one for the Scotland section.
I found that naturally things sped up towards the end though and I covered a lot of miles in relatively few pages towards the end of the book. I think that’s fine - once you’d read about one really hard 30 mile day, I figured you didn’t need to read about five more. Also, in my story, the bulk of the self-reflective/personal development piece happened through the beginning and middle of the journey and by the end I was more just having a nice time and had less to say. This might be different for you and you might want to skip through the middle section more quickly if, for instance, something more dramatic happens at the end.
You obviously want it to flow and the readers to have enough information about each part of your adventure but I’d say don’t force it if you don’t have much to say about a particular section, and save those words for a more interesting bit.
How do you decide what makes the cut and doesn’t?
I’ve touched on this a bit some of the answers above but ultimately I think you have to just not to be too sentimental about the whole thing. Some of my absolute favourite memories from the run didn’t make it into Coasting because they didn’t add anything useful to the story. I tried to see specific stories or anecdotes as representative of wider themes/plot points and then cherry picked the best ones for each category (or spaced them out to help pace the story, as above).
What was the hardest part of the process?
If you’re a regular reader this won’t be news to you but I am an absolutely horrible procrastinator. (I feel like I should trademark that I say it so often. HorribleProcrastintor™.) I once heard self-esteem described as centring around consistently keeping the small promises we make to ourselves and all I can say is that, by that measure, it’s no wonder I don’t always feel the most confident. I find it a constant battle to get anything done and am endlessly breaking promises to myself.
The hardest part of the book writing process by far was just sitting down and getting it done - but that’s also what I’m most proud of myself for. I’d hazard a guess that the majority of books remain unwritten not because of a lack of ideas or talent but simply due to the words staying in someone’s brain and never making it onto paper. I’m absolutely amazed that I managed to get them down (and just hoping it wasn’t a fluke).
Another hard thing is making peace with the fact that everybody won’t like your book. A big part of my story was being 23 and in debt and dating a man who wasn’t very nice to me and generally just feeling very lost and confused, and going on a big adventure to try and work all of that out. I tried to convey those elements of the story through the cover, subtitle and blurb but some people have apparently still picked it up expecting a comprehensive history of the British coast or a full-on nature book and ultimately finished it feeling disappointed.
But that’s alright, for all the grumpy 1* reviewers I’ve had countless ridiculously nice comments from people saying they can relate to various elements of my story and that makes having laid all that stuff bare worth it one hundred times over.
Hopefully that’s helped if you’re thinking about writing your own adventure book or just nosy about how the process works. If you’ve got any more questions, feel free to leave them below and I’ll do my best to answer.
“Some of my absolute favourite memories from the run didn’t make it into Coasting because they didn’t add anything useful to the story.”
Can you put those into one of your future substack articles please
Really helpful! Trying to write a book but keep putting it off, good to know other people have the same feelings. Pretty certain mine won’t be a big seller like yours 😆, but as long as my parents and friends buy a copy, it’ll be worth it, I think 🙃