InsideOut Travel—Guidebook Writing Cont.

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During my three-month tour of the archipelago I had many disastrous days like this, when I had to convince myself not to reach for the gin bottle, repeating that I was suffering so that somebody else didn’t have to.

Friends were amazed that I personally hiked every walk mentioned in the guide and asked why I didn’t copy them from other sources, but my conscience wouldn’t allow that. For every successful walk that made it into the guide, there was another that never got off the ground as I wasted all morning just trying to find the starting point. Even worse were the hikes that ended in a couple of angst-filled hours trying to find my way out of a forest, having foolishly neglected to buy a compass before I set off.

But I figured I could manage more or less anything, having overcome what I considered the greatest challenge—being commissioned to write the guidebook. I’d studied journalism at university and was always trying to find a way to combine writing with my true passion—travel.

After a couple of years teaching English in the Canary Islands, I began to feel fiercely proud of the archipelago and got a little irate when people dismissed the islands as tacky tourist destinations. I set about convincing a guidebook publisher to let me pen a book about the real Canary Islands, a place I’m proud to call my home. A string of rejections followed and I was thinking of giving up when one speculative e-mail reached an editor at just the right time. He replied, telling me that they were actually thinking of adding the Canaries to their title list. A couple of nerve-racking weeks exchanging proposals, ideas and cuttings led to a contract being issued.

I was on top of the world until the panic set in. In theory the idea had seemed a good one, but suddenly I was faced with the task of producing an in-depth guidebook and had no idea where to begin. I decided to start small and headed to El Hierro, the baby of the archipelago. After a visit to the tourist information office, I booked into the cheapest guesthouse I could find and spread my recently acquired maps and information across the shabby springless bed. Now what?

I knew damn well how to use a guidebook, but to write one? I moved from my room to the bar and settled down with my maps and a glass of the local wine. Then it hit me—it was simple really; I’d just have to work in reverse. Instead of reading a book and choosing places worth visiting, I’d just have to go everywhere and then decide what was worth writing about.

Of course, I wasted a lot of time in dead-end towns with no attraction other than the next bus out of there, but that’s the whole point of a guidebook isn’t it? The writer visits the dumps so that the traveler knows not to bother.

Over the next 12 weeks I spent hours in tourist information offices or chatting to locals, hoping to get some insider tips. I soon realized how much a guidebook writer relies on the kindness of strangers; if no one had helped me I think I’d still be mooching around the first island. But thanks to the affability of the Canarians, three months later I had visited all seven islands, plus the two tiny islets of Lobos and La Graciosa. I explored almost every corner, staking out hotels, splashing out on recommended restaurants and entering more museums than I’d visited in the rest of my life.

Beach on Tenerife in the a.m. Lidian Neeleman.

Like me, you might think that it’s a cushy life being a guidebook writer—that it’s just the same as traveling, but with the added bonus of a hefty pay packet. I soon learnt that this was far from the truth. For a start, it’s not a profession that’s ever going to make you rich—people who write guidebooks do it for their love of travel, not their love of the green stuff.

Publishers tend to work on a commission from sales basis and don’t pay expenses, so you have to take a gamble and spend your savings just to complete the research. Friends and family scoffed, claiming I was being taken for a ride and swearing they’d never work for free, but I didn’t see it that way. I figured that on previous trips I never stood any chance of recovering what I’d spent, so if I could see the islands and end up breaking even it would be great.

The other big difference between traveling for fun and writing a guide is the amount of time you spend in each place. On a normal trip when you find a town that charms you, you stay there as long as desired, but when the deadline is always looming you tend to think "I have a million things to do today and as much as I love this place I must move on."

Of course, once the fun of traveling ends, the hard work begins. As well as an in depth guide on what to see and do, you suddenly need to become an expert on history, geology, flora and all elements of local culture. Ploughing through the complete history of the islands was hard going, but I’m now considered an expert by all my Canarian friends and have at last acquired a specialist subject should I ever go on a game show.

Despite all the horrendous hikes and dead-end drives, it’s an experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything. It would probably have taken me years to visit the islands in such depth—indeed I have Canarian friends who haven’t seen half of the towns that I have and they’ve lived here forever. Now I know exactly which places I want to return to and spend some quality time—and hopefully I’ll convince a few other people to do the same.

Lucy Corne is a freelance writer in the Canary Islands and has just written a Bradt guidebook on the islands. She has traveled extensively in South America and South Africa and has visited Mexico, Mongolia and China.

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CONTINUED GUIDEBOOK WRITING

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