Travel Happy

If you’ve dreamed of becoming a travel writer but don’t know where to start, the 2012 World Nomads Travel Writing Scholarship is pretty much the perfect opportunity to actually make the idea become real.

World Nomads Travel Scholarship

It’s one of the questions I get asked the most – how do I become a travel writer? Previous in-depth interviews here on Travelhappy with established travel writers – Simon Sellars in How To Become A Lonely Planet Travel Writer and Don Morgan in What’s It’s Like To Be A Travel Writer For Travelfish have long been two of the most popular pages on the site.

While travel writing is changing as digital content increasingly becomes the first place people look for travel information, the need for travel writers who know what they’re doing is arguably even more vital than ever. Unfortunately, the wages travel writers receive for articles or guidebooks is being continually squeezed, and to make a real go of it as an actual career you need to be very savvy not only about writing itself but also how market your writing talents and maximise the income it can generate. These are things you frankly won’t get taught in any school or course.

This is why the World Nomads 2012 Travel Writing Scholarship is an invaluable step up for anyone who really, truly, passionately wants to be a travel writer (rather than just scribbling an occasional incoherent sentence on a beach while taking hits from the bong).

Not only does the winner of the scholarship get an all-expenses paid trip to Singapore, Bali and Malaysia (including the flight from their home country), the also get one to one mentoring and hands-on write-it-right-now travel writing experience with Rough Guides author Richard Lim in Singapore, Travelfish co-founder Stuart McDonald in Bali and Tin Cho Chaw from Burmese foodie site hsa*ba in Malaysia.

AS a way to really focus on what it means to be a travel writer, this is pretty much the perfect introduction, and could certainly quickly lead to paid work beyond. It’s not often you’ll find a bona fide chance like this to genuinely improve your career prospects as a travel writer not only by doing hands-on work for real publications but also to begin making contacts with the right people who can point you towards where to look for work next.

Check out the full details as written up by Stuart on Travelfish and also see the official World Nomads Scholarship page – including an important breakdown of the dates you need to be available and how the trip works. There’s also a bunch of videos from previous scholarship winners here which helps give you a sense of what you’d be getting yourself into if you win the scholarship.

World Nomads are a travel insurance company, (as recommended by Lonely Planet, Travelfish and, erm, me) but they also do a lot of philanthropic stuff too – this scholarship is just one of them. You can see all the developing world projects World Nomads donates money to on their Footprints Network.

World Nomads regularly offer discount coupon codes to make their travel insurance even cheaper – check this previous post on World Nomads Coupons