April 13-15: Spend a weekend writing in Zurich

In 2010, Writer Abroad and two other American writers living in Zurich stopped complaining about not having English-language writing instruction in Zurich and created it instead. 

Today, the Zurich Writers Workshop is holding its 8th workshop. For better or worse, since Writer Abroad created it, a lot of other workshops have been founded both in Zurich and in Switzerland. It's been great to see such interest in English-language writing instruction in a country where English is not even one of the four official languages. It felt like a big risk back in 2010, but today it's shown there is a big heart for this kind of weekend event.

Which bring us to our 2018 workshop.

The 2018 Zurich Writers Workshop, which will be held April 13-15, is going to feature two very different, but equally great workshops: Food & Travel Writing with Adam H. Graham and Drafting and Revision with Michelle Bailat-Jones. 

Registration just opened and will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis.

If you can’t commit to the full weekend, it’s possible to just attend Pitch Perfect in Zurich, which will be held on Sunday, April 15th. Pitch Perfect in Zurich will offer live feedback on anything a writer might pitch to an editor: from query letters, freelance magazine and newspaper pitches, to personal essay pitches. To reflect reality, the participants will pitch the instructors ahead of time via email, and besides providing feedback on each submission, the panelists will discuss which submissions caught their eye in their packed inbox and why.

What's more, mid-April is a great time to visit Zurich thanks to the spring festival, Sechseläuten, where a snowman called the Böögg will be set on fire on April 16th to predict the summer weather. So enjoy a writing weekend, and then end it with a bang, the Böögg version.

A decade of Swiss discovery. Now available.

Writer Abroad traveled around Switzerland for almost 9 years. Then she took 3 years to write this book. Needless to say, travel writing isn't for those who want quick results. But finally, it's here. Writer Abroad's Swiss travel book.

If you're interested in seeing the real Switzerland (or just interested in how a decade of discovery can be told in 326 pages with 69 photographs), order a copy for yourself.

The book is available by order at any bookstore or you can buy it from any online bookseller. Below are some of the places you can find the book:

Order your book on amazon.com

Order your Kindle version

Order your book on amazon.co.uk

Order your book on amazon.de

Order your book from bookdepository.co.uk

Order your book from Barnes & Noble

Order your Nook version

Traveling like a local. It's never been more important.

If you’re the type that reads blogs by writers abroad, then you know that travel is awesome. And you probably also know that when Writer Abroad says travel, she doesn’t mean Cruise Ship. She means real-deal-get-on-a-public-bus-where-you-don’t-speak-the-language-and-just-go-for-it travel.

This kind of travel has never been more important. As countries go nationalistic in a world that’s ever more globalized, understanding people who differ from us can mean the difference between war and peace.

That’s why Writer Abroad has written her latest travel book, which is all about traveling like a local in the country she knows best–Switzerland. And she encourages other writers abroad out there to write their own versions of this book about the countries closest to their hearts.

Available next month, 99.9 Ways to Travel Switzerland Like a Local is one part travel book, one part culture guide, and total bucket list enjoyment. It allows you to say adieu to Lucerne and allegra to the place the Swiss voted most beautiful. It encourages you to cut the Swiss army knife from your shopping list and replace it with a rubber messenger bag. And it gives you the inspiration you need to stop following umbrella-toting tour guides (or books that act like them) and start following 320,000 well-dressed Swiss cows instead.

Whether you’re a vacationer rethinking your version of touring, an expatriate who wants to get to know your adopted country on a deeper level, or even if you’re Swiss—99.9 Ways to Travel Switzerland Like a Local is for anyone who believes that the best travel stories come from a desire not just to take a snapshot of a place from a train window, but to stop, smile, and disembark for a while in order to bring the meaning of that blurry photo into sharper focus.

To promote her new book, Writer Abroad will make special appearances in Switzerland in May. She’d love to see you at one of the following:

The Zurich Writers Workshop, May 14, 2:30 p.m. (Writer Abroad will join other authors to discuss how to build a writing career.)

The American International Club of Zurich TGIF, May 19, 6:30 p.m. (Writer Abroad will discuss American life after Switzerland (scary!), the benefits of traveling like a local, and host a quiz—with a book prize—to see who already travels Swisser than the Swiss.)

Global Book Fair, May 20, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. (Writer Abroad will read a story to children and discuss some off-the-beaten-path family activities in Switzerland.)

Travel Writing: The Best Escape for Writers in the U.S.

Happy New Year, Writers Abroad. Be glad, today, that you are abroad.

But for those in the U.S. like Writer Abroad is now, there is nothing like a strange new American presidency to make all Americans feel a little more foreign in our own country.

If there’s any consolation prize, the recent (and sure to be upcoming) American strangeness makes Writer Abroad feel less like a foreigner in her own country than she did after moving back two years ago from Switzerland.

When over half your country also seems confounded by its bizarre direction, it makes the last stages of repatriation a little easier somehow. Together, we are all foreigners in America these days. (This phenomenon is also making Writer Abroad’s upcoming book project, American Life: 30 Things I Wish I’d Known, an even more interesting thing to write than she ever expected.)

Luckily, Writer Abroad often escapes into Switzerland, even from the United States. (Funny how that happens when you are writing a travel book about Switzerland.) Writing this travel book over the last three years has been a wonderful escape. After the book is published this spring, Writer Abroad will lose her daily excuse to escape into another world because she will be 100% focused on her book about American life. But she’s sure to find another excuse.

Speaking of escaping, here’s a piece she wrote this week for CNN Business Traveller about traveling in Davos, Switzerland. It was timed to run with the World Economic Forum, but really, Davos is a much better place to go when that conference is over. In fact, during the Forum, many places in Davos shut down for security reasons.

And for those of you who would like to escape to Switzerland to do a little writing this year, the Zurich Writers Workshop will be held May 12-14, 2017 in Zurich. Hmm…since Writer Abroad is both planning and attending this workshop, she actually will escape the U.S. for a little while once again. Care to join her?

Writing about the old country

Writer Abroad is working on a travel book about Switzerland and it often makes her wonder—is writing this making her attempt at repatriation easier or harder? On one hand, it is therapeutic to write about the country she spent the last eight years living in. It keeps her connection to the country strong and will help maintain the author platform she built there. But on the other hand, it’s terrible to write about hiking around the longest glacier in Europe and be stuck in the flat American Midwest where no one hikes, let alone walks.

Missing the old country these
days…especially in spin class.

Writing this book is actually giving her strange side effects. She is physically aching for the great outdoors. And she didn't know it was possible to actually do that. It was especially acute this morning, when she went from writing about snowshoeing in the Alps to an indoor spin class--where riding up a hill involved a small click to the right of the bike's tension knob, instead of the winding castle-topped hill she used to ride up every week when she lived in Baden.

In any case, this travel book (one of four book projects at the moment—yes, Writer Abroad is crazy) is a kind of love letter to Switzerland since it includes over 100 things to do and places to go that Writer Abroad experienced as extraordinarily beautiful—or just very typically Swiss—during her many years wandering around with her GA, or country-wide train pass. It’s a book she hopes will inspire others who are in the country for a few days—years—or even a lifetime—to see Switzerland in new ways. She's learning to, without even being there. 

If you're a re-pat, does it help you to write about your "old" country?

Writing for Travelers Who'd Rather Stay at Home

Guest Post by Celia Luterbacher

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression "As pretty as an airport." Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort.  -  Douglas Adams

As an American expat living in Switzerland, where my husband was recently hired as a professor, I rely a lot on travel literature. I am still new to living abroad, and Switzerland is close to so many other countries that the Swiss consider a weekend not spent visiting Italy, France or Spain to be wasted. But reading travel blogs and books makes me feel guilty, because I know I am an imposter. While on paper I appear to be a travel-loving, adventure-craving explorer of foreign lands and cultures, I am actually a quiet, anxious introvert who adheres to routine the way some adhere to religion or veganism. I am a traveler who finds it difficult to travel, a homebody seldom at home, an adventuring hobbit. I am an "anti-expat," and I know I am not alone. My goal in writing this post and my blog, the Scrappy Traveler, is to train a spotlight on the anti-expat audience and provide examples of helpful anti-expat information and resources.

Living abroad out of happenstance--as a trailing spouse or as a professional relocated for a job, for example--raises a number of issues. For anti-expats, travel and life abroad are skills that must be strengthened through conscious effort, because we have not been blessed with wanderlust or an innate desire to leave home. This can be embarrassing to admit, because who doesn't love travel (or at least list it as an interest on Facebook)? Travel is the cornerstone of every bucket list, vacation and free giveaway. Saying you find travel difficult is like saying you don't care for puppies or happiness. For me, anti-expat life has meant packing up my things and moving permanently outside my comfort zone. But it has also brought daily learning, discovery and profound growth beyond my expectations.

Anti-expats must learn how to strike a balance between adapting to new cultural norms, and hanging onto old ways. I've found that keeping some familiar habits, at least temporarily, can help ease stress: for example, ordering takeout or buying only familiar foodstuffs for awhile before attempting to cook the local cuisine. I am proud to finally be at the stage where I only need to resort to Switzerland's American Food Market for peanut butter - a product that Europeans simply don't understand, despite their mastery of hazelnut spread (seriously, you can buy Nutella by the kilo here). But it's important for anti-expats to recognize where diving into the local way of doing things right away will make life abroad much easier. If living in Europe, chances are it will be less stressful to ditch the commute-by-car habit as soon as possible and learn the local train, bus, or metro schedule. 

Making new friends may be the most challenging aspect of anti-expat life. Natural travelers often have a knack for feeling comfortable enough in a second language, whether they have mastered the basics or not, to strike up a conversation with a stranger and go with the flow. They don't mind using a bit of sign language or making a few grammatical errors as long as they get their point across, and they enjoy the excitement of meeting new people. Before long, they’ve developed a network of friends who know the area and can provide advice and support. For anti-expats, learning the language as soon as possible is key, because the sooner one can say "please" and "thank you" and "how do I sign up for health insurance?" in the native tongue, the more connections it will be possible to make. Unfortunately, shyness can be an impediment to travel even within one's own country, but when foreign languages get thrown into the mix, social interaction can become nothing short of terrifying. If moving abroad for professional reasons, many companies will finance formal language classes, but for others this option may be too expensive or time-consuming. A fantastic way for anti-expats to become more comfortable speaking outside the classroom is to find someone who speaks the desired language as his or her mother tongue, who also wants to learn English as a second language (in my area, this program is called Tandem). This person could be a friend or co-worker, or a connection made through an online ad. But anti-expats should not discount the importance of traditional learning to supplement conversation practice: for this purpose, I can't recommend the app Duolingo highly enough.

Expat communities can also be wonderful resources for making friends, and finding groups of people with similar interests and backgrounds online is very easy. However, it is important for anti-expats to make sure they supplement time spent in expat activities with efforts to meet local people. Identifying inexpensive, low-key, flexibly scheduled classes or workshops focused on a favorite hobby can be a great way to for anti-expats to accomplish this, as can engaging in volunteer work.

Travel Writers Abroad, take note: there is an audience out there eager for information about travel, but not necessarily for the same reasons as traditional consumers of travel literature. These people may not find living abroad easy or natural, but they still find it worth doing, and targeted resources are essential. Rather than the Top 10 Places to Eat in Tallinn or the Most Scenic Bike Routes through Scotland, anti-expats are more likely to want to read about the Top 10 Tips for Budgeting in Two Currencies or Least Stressful Weekend Activities in Geneva. Perhaps these topics seem boring when there are so many places to see and things to do, but for an anti-expat, they can make all the difference in helping a reluctant traveler find their way in the world.

The truth about travel writing

When Writer Abroad used to dream about life as a travel writer, she imagined glamour. And more glamour. Oh, the free meals she would eat. Ah, the overnight stays she would enjoy. And yes, all those airline miles she’d acquire.

The reality is much different. Especially if you’re a travel writer who writes about Switzerland.

The Swiss laws of economics and commerce don’t really apply to the rest of the world. If you need evidence, go to a Swiss flea market and try to buy a garden gnome for less than $50. The seller won’t budge on the price—they seem to not care whether they sell the gnome or not.

Which brings Writer Abroad to life as a travel writer in Switzerland. Most Swiss establishments don’t appear to care that Writer Abroad is writing about them and therefore bringing them business. In their minds, they already have enough business and don’t see the point of more.

The first time Writer Abroad’s request for information was ignored by a Swiss establishment, she was pretty surprised. She is no longer surprised by these non-responses–or even by negative responses. Last week on a research outing she was pretty much told by one annoyed bakery owner that he didn’t have time for her even though he had agreed to meet with her. Swiss hotels consistently ignore Writer Abroad’s requests for images of their hotels even if they are going to be displayed on a website that gets a million eyeballs a day.

So. To those who search for the glamour in travel writing, let Writer Abroad be the first to tell you that there is none, except to say if you truly love travel and you truly love writing, then it is still the best job in the world.

Is pitching pointless?

Give me a P

Give me an I

Give me a T C H!

How not to land an assignment: the pitch letter

Take any magazine writing class, and you’ll be drilled on how to write the perfect pitch letter. You’ll be told how the perfect pitch is crucial to scoring an assignment. And you’ll get all pumped up about pitching and how it’s going to change your writing life.

Writer Abroad would love to go to bat for pitching. But the reality is, she is a strike out.

Her big pitching effort began in 2008, three years after she began her newspaper and magazine writing career. She took a $400 travel writing course with Mediabistro hoping it would help her take her writing to the next level, publication-wise. She spent hours of time (not to mention money—buying English-language pubs when living abroad is expensive, think $15 for one copy of NG’s Traveler) researching publications, perfecting her pitches, and tracking down emails of appropriate editors. Then she proofread her pitches at least 100 times, sent out the suckers like fly balls, and waited for her home run.

But she heard nothing.

Nothing.

Silence. Maybe a rejection here and there, three months after sending the pitch.

Fair enough. Rejection is a part of the writing process. Writer Abroad was not naïve. And she was not going to give up easily. So she pitched other publications...reworking the same idea two or three times. And...

Nothing.

Well, once, a bite. An assignment. And then, a month later, an un-assignment...

So, let’s see here. After 100+ hours with a batting score of .001, Writer Abroad learned something maybe some of you already know: pitching is a gigantic waste of time and money (especially considering the rates magazines pay these days).

So now, Writer Abroad has a new approach to landing assignments.

She does (insert drum roll here)…

Nothing.

  

And she’s much more successful.

How is this possible?

Ok, well, maybe she doesn't exactly do nothing. But she sure does a heck of lot less work that she was doing before.

Instead of spending 10 hours a week perfecting magazine and newspaper pitches, Writer Abroad spends one or two hours a week blogging and about twice a year she updates her personal writing website.

As it turns out, this is the 21^st century. So editors have something they didn’t have before: an easy way to find writers living abroad.

Here’s the thing. As a writer abroad, your location sets you apart. In fact, editors are probably searching right now for a writer in your very location. Make sure they can find you. Fast.

How? Have a blog. Have a website. Have a tweet worth a re-tweet. Have something smart Writer Abroad hasn’t even thought of yet. Then pretend you’re an editor searching Google for a writer. Do you show up in the search results?

If not, take a course on SEO. But heaven forbid, do not take a course on how to pitch.

Unless…we can find writers out there who can prove Writer Abroad wrong.

So let’s hear it.

Are there still writers out there with respectable batting averages? If you pitch, do you score magazine and newspaper assignments? (Excluding personal essays—Writer Abroad still is able to place personal essays through pitching completed pieces). Or do you think pitching is pointless?