Assignment 7: Expenses, Income, and the Logistics of Following a Dream

By Miranda Ward | Published: 20 October, 2010

I have a question: how do I pursue my passion?

Another way of looking at this might be to ask: what’s the point at which we commit to something wholeheartedly?

A few years ago, I thought I was doing exactly this. I was accepted onto a creative writing MA course. I borrowed a lot of money to pay the fees, but I didn’t mind, because I thought: this is it. This is me becoming a writer. On the other side of a one intensive year, I’ll have it all figured out.

So I lived the life of a starving artist, working part-time while I wrote my dissertation, imagining how my life would be different on the magic day I handed it in. I received an MA with distinction. I had half the draft of a book finished. And I had no direction whatsoever.

I continued working the same part-time admin job I’d had since I first graduated from college. It had been demeaning enough to make peanuts doing something mind-blowingly dull after my first degree, but then I had promised myself it was only temporary; now I was starting to feel that I’d fallen down a pit and I couldn’t climb out. I began to identify myself by my job, rather than my ambitions: I’m just an admin assistant, I’d say. I make photocopies, mostly. I abandoned the book.

I was only working 20 hours a week, but I would come home in the early afternoons feeling completely drained. I would curl up on the sofa and doze until dinnertime. With every spare moment not spent sleeping, working, or moping, I worried about how I was going to pay for things. I kept maxing out my credit card and I couldn’t get an overdraft and my partner, in the early stages of launching his own freelance career, didn’t have enough money to support me.

I didn’t write very much, either.

On the other hand, doing what I’m doing now – a full-time, intellectually engaging office job – isn’t really the answer, either. I may have more energy, more enthusiasm. I may be writing a lot more than I did when I worked part time, but there is only so much time that you can give. And when I’m not writing or traveling, which is, let’s face it, most of the time, I resent the fact that I’m not writing or traveling. In the same way that anxiety is not conducive to creativity (for me), neither is anger and resentment.

So what is the answer?

This is all a bit like embarking on a quest. I know what the goal is, but I don’t know the best path to it.

Here’s the life I live now:

I’m a writer by night. During the day I earn enough money to support myself; I have very little debt, except to my very understanding family. I have some flexibility in my job – the ability to work partly from home, to take time off to visit my parents in California over Christmas – but I am also married to it; I have a contract, a salary, and a responsibility to an organisation and a goal which is not mine. I daydream incessantly. I don’t spend as much time or energy as I’d like on the things that are actually important to me.

Here’s the life I want to live:

I’m a writer. During the day I earn enough money to support myself by doing things I’m passionate about. This isn’t always writing or blogging – sometimes I’ll be working on other projects, I’ll be teaching, or editing, or researching. But I don’t have a “proper job” and I always feel that I have control over what I do. I have the flexibility to travel, to work from abroad, to keep funny hours sometimes.

What I don’t yet know is how to get from here to there.

To try to figure it out, I broke down my expenses. Which is not, incidentally, something I’d recommend doing without a large glass of gin at your elbow to act as an anaesthetic. Since I got my full-time job (at the start of the summer), I’ve started spending a pretty shocking amount of money.

My conclusions are as follows:

My rent is relatively low for where I live, and I don’t have a car or any major monthly travel expenses like a bus or subway pass, as I mostly use my bicycle to get around. I don’t pay for a gym membership and my partner and I share the burden of utility bills.

On the other hand, the UK is an expensive place to live, and I have a frivolous streak – I love eBay, new books, and the pub a little too well. Travel from here can be affordable (budget airlines, the Eurostar), but going home to California will set me back about £500 every time, no matter what. And I appear to be constantly paying for little necessary things – like re-soleing old boots – that really add up.

I do know how to live on very little money – I’ve done it before – and I can see some things I could easily cut back on (mostly in the food/drink department). But I don’t necessarily want to go back to that life, because I know that as soon as I start making decisions like: no, I can’t afford to buy an avocado this week, as soon as I start relying on credit cards again, I lose the confidence and the energy to create.

Going freelance is part of the answer, not the whole answer.

To date, I’ve never received more than $150 for any one piece of writing. Mostly I’ve received about $25 per piece – from Matador, and recently from an expat site that I contributed to. As supplementary income, this is fine, but to fully support myself on $25 an article, I would need to produce a ridiculous amount of quality writing per month. And the great truth of freelance writing is, of course, that there’s never any guarantee you’ll even always have work. It would be unrealistic to suppose I could produce enough $25 articles to support myself, but even more unrealistic to suppose that anybody would want that many pieces from me.

I could raise the stakes, hope that higher-paying markets might buy my pieces. And of course I will do this, and I do hope they’ll want me, but I don’t feel that I can build a life around this hope, not yet. In order to sustain myself both financially and emotionally, freelance writing needs to be part of what I do, not all of what I do.

As for the rest of it – I guess I’ll just keeping slogging. I still can’t see the whole path, but I can see where it starts. So I’ll start there.

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Assignment 6: 10 Markets for Travel Writers and Essayists

By Miranda Ward | Published: 1 October, 2010

There are plenty of high-profile, often paying markets for travel writers beyond National Geographic, Travel + Leisure, and the other big glossies. The following 10 publications and websites are not all travel-specific, but then, travel writing is not always travel-specific, either. Consider the angles of your experience – it may be that a creative nonfiction magazine or a lifestyle website is the perfect forum for a place-based story.

1. Verge

Verge is “North America’s magazine for exploring opportunities to study, work and volunteer abroad.” Verge is a quarterly print publication with digital edition. Readers are generally young (between 17 and 40 years old) and articles are aimed at “people who travel with purpose”.

Submit either a completed manuscript or a detailed query by email (if submitting a manuscript, attach as a Word document; if a query, paste the text in the body of the email message). Pitches should include a description of your idea, a sample title, subtitle, and opening paragraph, outline, an indication of whether or not you have photos to include, and a bio including previous publication credits.

Verge will reply within 8 weeks if they are interested in your idea. To query or submit, email contributing@vergemagazine.ca

2. The Guardian

The Guardian is a major national daily newspaper in the UK. To query, contact the commissioning editor for the section you’re interested in writing for by phone or email with a brief outline of your idea. The Guardian has separate editors for the in-print and online editions of the paper, so consider where your article should be placed before querying.

Travel Editors: Joanne O’Connor (online), Andy Pietrasik (print). Email pitches to travel@gaurdian.co.uk (online) or travel.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk (print).

3. The New York Times

The New York Times is a major daily United States newspaper, respected internationally. It has both a print and online edition.

The travel editor is Danielle Mattoon, who was appointed earlier this year. According to the site, queries and articles should be sent to travelmail@nytimes.com.

The travel section will not publish articles written as a result of subsidised trips and will not purchase pieces that have been published elsewhere. Submissions should be no longer than 1500 words. Usually if a submission is being considered for publication, “the writer will be informed within two weeks.”

4. The San Francisco Chronicle
The San Francisco Chronicle is the largest newspaper in Northern California. It is owned by the Hearst Corporation and has an online home in edition to the print edition: SFGate.com, which includes some features not available in the print edition of the paper.

The Travel Editor is Spud Hilton: shilton@sfchronicle.com

5. The Huffington Post

The Huffington Post’s travel section features “beautiful photography, breaking news, destination briefs, trends”. The editor writes: “we’re fully committed to the idea that travel, no matter how close or far you go, is in everyone’s DNA.”

The travel editor is Kate Auletta, who has stated in an interview that she is open to receiving submissions from travel bloggers and writers – “As far as I’m concerned, the more voices, the better. Have people shoot me an email to travel@huffingtonpost.com with what they write about and where they have traveled, their writing experience. etc.”

It is worth noting that there is no compensation for Huffington Post contributors, though the site is highly regarded and gets plenty of traffic.

6. The Christian Science Monitor

The Christian Science Monitor is an international news organisation, “global, both in practice and in spirit”, which delivers coverage via its website, weekly magazine, daily newspaper, email newsletters, and mobile site. Although owned by The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, MA, The Christian Science Monitor is not a religious publication and is regarded as a serious news source.

There is no specific Travel section, but the “Home Forum” section is looking for upbeat, personal 400-800 word essays. The editors say, “these are first-person, nonfiction explorations of how you responded to a place, a person, a situation, an event, or happenings in everyday life. Tell a story; share a funny true tale.”

The Home Forum editors are Susan Leach and Marjorie Kehe. Submit via the website.

All material must be original and previously unpublished. Do not e-mail the section’s editors directly. They will not respond to individual submissions but will contact you within 3 weeks if they plan to use your essay. Include your contact information (e-mail address, daytime telephone, mailing address) and a word count with your submission.

7. Creative Nonfiction

Creative Nonfiction is a literary magazine with a circulation of about 7,000 which publishes nonfiction prose.

No editor is named, but the editorial board can be found online.

Creative Nonfiction often publishes “theme issues”, but also accepts general submissions year-round. They are looking for “strong reportage” with “an informational quality or instructive element that offers the reader something to learn (an idea, concept or collection of facts, strengthened with insight, reflection and interpretation”.

Submissions should be 5,000 words maximum with word count clearly marked. They do not accept queries, multiple submissions, or submissions via fax or email, though they will respond to submissions sent from outside the United States by email. Submissions should be sent by post to:

Creative Nonfiction Foundation

5501 Walnut Street, Suite 202

Pittsburgh, PA 15232
USA

Pay is $10 per printed page. Response times vary; though they try to respond as soon as possible, “it is not uncommon for a response to take up to 6 months”.

8. Afar

Launched in 2009, Afar is a travel magazine, published six times a year, with an emphasis on “experiential travel” rather than “consumerist travel”. Says founder Greg Sullivan about the magazine’s approach to travel: “we now search for meaning wherever we can find it.”

Afar recommends that new writers suggest ideas for departments, which include Wander (“where should I travel to next?”), Resident (“a local introduces readers to…his or her neighborhood”), Nomad (“Q&A with a modern nomad”), Feast (“a two-page spread about a local dish”), and Stay (“Recommendations of places to stay”). Each section has its own editor, so check the guidelines on the website to ensure you address queries to the right person.

For instance, to submit a query to the Wander section, email April Kilcrease at april@afar.com with a brief description of your idea, bearing Afar’s mission and values in mind, as well as samples of or links to your previously published work.

Note that the magazine only covers destinations outside of the United States.

9. GreenFutures

Green Futures is a magazine published by Forum for the Future, a sustainable development charity. The magazine focuses on the latest environmental solutions and sustainable futures. The audience includes “politicians, business people, local authorities, campaigners, the media, educators and students”, so the magazine aims to be “engaging and entertaining as well as authoritative”. The editors write: “stories should be aimed squarely at the mainstream, rather than specialists or activists. Successful articles will avoid either a campaigning or an academic voice. If you want a benchmark, think in terms of the weekend supplements of any of the quality broadsheets”.

Propose ideas on topics including “energy, travel and transport, food, health, business, entrepreneurs, finance, cities, countryside” by emailing post@greenfutures.org.uk. Explain “what you plan to cover and how you will undertake the reporting” and attach relevant samples of writing.

The Editor in Chief is Martin Wright and the Deputy Editor is Anna Simpson.

10. Salon

Salon is an online news and entertainment website, featuring “original investigative stories, breaking news, provocative personal essays and highly respected criticism.”

Submit articles and story ideas via email, with the text of the query or article in the body of the email and “EDITORIAL SUBMISSIONS” in the subject line. Also include a brief bio with your experience as a writer and your qualifications for writing the story you’re pitching. Include clips or links to previously published pieces if possible.

Submissions should be sent to the relevant editor, so queries for the Life section, for instance, would be directed to: life@salon.com.

Response time is about three weeks, though Salon does not always respond to all queries.

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Assignment 5 Part 2: Finding Your Story

By Miranda Ward | Published: 27 September, 2010

1. Matador Trips
A search for “Fez” on Matador Trips reveals that, although the city has been referenced in one or two other articles (a piece on food in Morocco is the only one in which it plays a largeish role), the site has never done a Fez feature. I also notice that a number of the pieces tend to follow a certain structure – “25 Things to Do in This Place”, “5 Experiences Not to Miss in This Other Place”, etc.

So I might propose a piece which looks at Fez as an appealing alternative to the more popular (and therefore touristy) Marrakech for a city break in Morocco and presents a digestible overview of what to see and do there: “10 Things Not to Miss in Fez,” for instance.

Before my trip, I would want to research potential destinations and experiences in Fez. I would look at guidebooks but also contact residents – friends who live there, for instance – who might have slightly more offbeat suggestions, so the piece wouldn’t just be a Lonely Planet rehash. While there, I would explore with the article in mind, taking note of important information such as names and addresses. After my trip I would need to check facts, perhaps using some of the contacts I’d made during the trip to confirm details.

2. Matador Change
The articles on Matador Change tend to focus on green travel, activism, and cultural/sociopolitical issues. The structure of the pieces varies; there are “Green Guides”, calls to action, lists, and more straightforward features (a recent one, for instance, on a female wrestler in Bolivia).

So I might like to pitch an article about the new centre for craft just outside the Fez medina, which seeks to promote quality local craftsmanship and to provide young people with professional qualifications, primarily through apprenticeship in traditional artisanal areas such as weaving, zellij tiling, and pottery. The centre has the potential to be both a culturally and economically positive development in Fez, with its emphasis on quality and education.

In order to prepare, I would want to arrange a visit to the centre ahead of time – although visitors are welcome to wander around, I would probably want to speak with instructors and administrators, as well as some students, to gather on-the-ground impressions of the centre. In some cases this might require a translator, as I have no Arabic (or indeed French), so I’d want to start making arrangements before I actually arrived. Once there, a lot of my research would revolve around the centre itself, gathering facts and interviews. Upon my return, I would want to place the story in context by researching education and employment in Morocco, and Fez in particular, as well as looking for any recent studies or reports about the economic situation there. Similarly I would want to be familiar with the traditional arts and crafts of the area.

3. Matador Nights

Matador Nights publishes more offbeat pieces – often centring around nightlife, food, music, and festivals.
So I might like to pitch a photo essay on the Cherry Festival at Sefrou, a small town just outside of Fez. At 90 years old, the cherry festival is among Morocco’s oldest festivals, and is not just a celebration of the town’s famous cherries but also a chance for artists to display their work.

To prepare, I’d want to find out the exact dates of the festival (which happens at the end of June each year), read about the festival’s history, and perhaps make contact with some people to speak to when I arrived (I know a woman who works with artists to get paintings displayed over the course of the festival, so I might start with her). While there, I would primarily take photos, but also try to talk to locals about the festival, discover quirks and interesting facts, and take note of any important details, as well as take note of things like where to eat and stay in Sefrou. I presume that if I was taking photos of people, I’d also want to ensure that I had their permission to publish them. And once home, I’d definitely want to fact-check.

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Assignment 5: Writer Bio

By Miranda Ward | Published: 2 September, 2010

Three bios: the first adheres (ish) to the “30 words or fewer” guideline in the assignment; the second is ever-so-slightly longer. The third is the bio for this blog (copied and pasted below) – much longer and in first person, and not something that would be published, but as it’s what an editor might see if she followed, say, a link to my blog in a pitch, it’s perhaps relevant to the assignment anyhow.

So in various manifestations, here I am:

1.
Miranda Ward is mostly a writer but also an expat, a geek, and a sporadic but enthusiastic runner. She grew up in California and currently lives in Oxford, where she is working on her first book. Find her at A Literal Girl or email her: miranda.ward@gmail.com.

2.
Miranda Ward is mostly a writer but also an expat, a geek, and a sporadic but enthusiastic runner. She grew up on a working cattle ranch in California; currently she lives with her partner in Oxford, where she spends a lot of time at the pub. She is working on her first book, having earned an MA in creative writing. Find her at A Literal Girl or email her at miranda.ward@gmail.com.

3.

I’m Miranda Ward. I’m a writer and an expat. This is my MatadorU blog, where I put assignments and related posts. I have another blog, too. It’s a bit more plural.

Here’s some stuff for you:

A man called Gotthold Ephraim Lessing said, “Let us be lazy in everything, except in loving and drinking, except in being lazy.”

I’m really very good at that.

I like words. Sometimes I like words too well. I own a lot of books. Once I had to ship them across the Atlantic and it cost me more money than I care to admit, but taking them with me was not, is never, optional.

I like the travel state of mind. I do not ever want to forget what it’s like to notice things. I’m interested in place: geography of the mind, borders and boundaries, the flâneur, the incorrigible wanderer.

I like cheese and a good cider (Luckily I also like to run). I wear leather shoes, mostly, though I also have a soft spot for converse and good hunter green wellies. I wish men wore hats still and women comported themselves with the grace of 1930s film stars. I however have no grace of my own and often trip over my own feet.

I like to watch a stormy sea, climb a grassy hill, and to stand under the lamplight in cities. When I was little I lived on a ranch and I would look out at the Pacific and pretend that the oilrigs were actually the ships of great explorers winding their way around the globe, or else that they were pirates on the horizon. Then I lived in an east coast city where I wandered for hours like Walter Benjamin or Baudelaire, making notes of how things are.

Now I live with my partner in Oxford, where I’m working on my first book, often out of my local pub, which has free wifi.

I’m a bit of a geek and I believe in the power and necessity of the internet.

I don’t however believe in work. Not as such. Instead I agree with this (it’s a Steve Jobs quote): “I don’t think of my life as a career…I do stuff. I respond to stuff. That’s not a career — it’s a life!” So yes: I do stuff and I respond to stuff and that’s the only way I could ever really be.

Thanks for reading and commenting and contributing and for emailing me at miranda.ward@gmail.com, if you feel so inclined.

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Fez Revisited [Personal Essay]

By Miranda Ward | Published: 22 August, 2010

I.

The day starts with a call to prayer. On the edge of morning I lie awake; in the night we have cast aside our blankets, and now we are naked atop the bed, sweating, unmoving. Through the open window I can see the Merenid Tombs.

Photo by Miranda Ward

Photo by Miranda Ward

From here they look tiny, but I have stood at their base, I know their true size.

Beside me he sleeps soundly. He snores. In the morning I will tell him this and he will say, you snore too, you know. (No, I didn’t know.) It’s a conversation we’ve had a hundred times before. And never mind the grandeur of our surroundings, never mind that we’re in Africa, in Fez. We’ll have the same mundane moments we have everywhere else.

And then: this voice. Allahu Akbar. Breaking the dawn. Allahu Akbar. The first word drawn out, lonely. The intimacy is surprising; it’s as if it’s coming from inside the room. Then it’s joined by others; a chorus, off-kilter. The whole city sings. There are men in mosques right now bent in devotion to their God. And we sleep on, or pretend to sleep on, and eventually, just as the colour of the day is seeping into the horizon, the voices cease, and I dream of the way the Hymnus Eucharisticus rings out from the tower at Magdalen College on May morning.

II.

This is our city. I think this as morning clouds burn off and a waiter delivers my sweet mint tea to the rooftop terrace. It’s irrational and untrue. But just for a moment, watching the bustle below, smelling the white smoke wafting from a small nearby chimney, I am profoundly attached to Fez.

Three years ago we came to this same café and sat just as we sit today. He made a sketch of a lamp. It took him nearly two hours to complete; I mostly watched him, occasionally making notes of my own, envying his visual instinct; everything I recorded had to be in words, which are clumsy in a place like this, where beauty is paramount, where the sensual, not the cerebral, is what strikes you. We stayed for so long that the proprietor, smoking some kif in the corner, came over and offered us a puff. It was my first time in Africa; I did not know how to say no to anything. So we said shokran and then swam back to our hotel room through a haze of fauvist colours.

Photo by Miranda Ward

Photo by Miranda Ward

Three years ago we had just met. We were a month into our relationship. Our future – he being from Oxford, me being from California – seemed only a cloud through which we could not even imagine passing. But here, in a grubby hotel room in the medina, the exoticism was a catalyst, and we evolved from lovers into something else.

We held hands shyly as we explored; we learned the smell of each other’s sweat, the intimacy of shared anxieties and happinesses. We spent our days walking imperfect circles, coming across sudden palaces, half-decayed, women scrubbing the rot of orange blossoms from the zellij tiles. We never quite knew where we were and we never once felt lost.

Today the air is cooler. There are cats on the rooftop, mean, skinny strays moving towards us in a hungry phalanx. We can see the blues and greens of Bab Boujloud up close; earlier I learned that it was only built in 1913, though to my untrained eyes it looks older. Like it’s been here forever. Since the first call to prayer, the first dawn cracking like an egg over this city.

III.

It’s different this time.

We’re staying with friends. Ali is from Fez, Alice is from England. They live in a house in the medina that they bought together and renovated. Three years ago we had tea on the rooftop with them. The house was still nothing but a construction site; they were sleeping under a tarpaulin, heating their water on a cooking stove. Their dogs, Sophie and Bobby, sat at our feet as Ali showed us how to make mint tea. It was a windy evening and the dust got in our eyes and they tried to tell us how beautiful this would all be when it was done.

Photo by Miranda Ward

Photo by Miranda Ward

And now it is done; and it is beautiful, and in the tiled kitchen we prepare meals and eat olives, our fingers wet with juice, and stay up late. Alice introduces us to her friends – other expats, brothers-in-law, students at the school where she is learning classical Arabic. I remember that the city which I have thought of as ours is, in fact, theirs too; everybody has a Fez, a mental map of the medina based not on street names but experience.

But it is also different because three years of living together has made it so. We are no longer getting to know each other in such an active way. It is sometimes almost like travelling with myself. He knows, now, that I like to wash my hands more than strictly necessary, and I know without thinking about it that he will smoke almost twice as much here. There is nothing really to hide, or reveal.

And this is such a sweet thing, but also lonely – suddenly here we, this one thing that is a “we” but also an “I”, are, in a foreign country. Perhaps this is why I wake so often in the night here – for, in spite of him being beside me, smelling and feeling more familiar than anything, than even myself, I have a sense of being also alone. And perhaps also this is why people have children – I have this thought just before an afternoon nap one day: that at a certain point you become so close that you almost need someone else – who will be like him and like you but different and constantly, forever, surprising – again. Is that a strange thing to think? But then, everything is strange here.

IV.

Even the passing of time is strange here. I forget how quickly the medina eats away the hours of a day. First it is morning, and then suddenly we are looking at the stars again.

The sun has sunk. We’re all on the terrace, even the dogs, in raptures over the blessed coolness of the air. After everyone else has gone to bed I get my camera out and take some photographs of a minaret near the house, bright green in the moonlight. Even the darkness here is characterized by light. The religious symbolism of this does not entirely escape me – at a christening a few weeks ago, we were asked to help the baby walk always in light – but I find it difficult to articulate it precisely. It is like this: even at night the minarets seem to be illuminated, whether or not they actually are. The one near Ali and Alice’s house is abandoned and silent, but still it shines.

Photo by Miranda Ward

Photo by Miranda Ward

I don’t mean magic exactly. (Though at dinner, Ali tells us of the magic in Fez, and I cannot help but trust him – he’s from here, he knows, his confidence is contagious). I mean that we see the minarets, the city itself, bathed always in light, even at the cold hour of midnight. Awoken at five by the resounding calls to prayer, the day seems already to have begun, even if the sun has not yet lifted its hot, heavy self over the Eastern horizon. We are alone but not alone.

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My Hometown in 500 Words

By Miranda Ward | Published: 28 July, 2010
Photo by Miranda Ward

Photo by Miranda Ward

The rats are in the walls again. I can hear them at night; the rhythms of their feet permeate my dreams.

In the morning we discuss what’s to be done about it. I point out that at least they’re not in the cars, eating the wires, as they’ve been known to do before. My father is fed up with setting traps and catching nothing; my mother is reluctant to let her morning be ruled by rodents.

He says, “Maybe they’ll like crunchy peanut butter better than smooth peanut butter.”
She says, “I don’t know, I can’t talk about this until I’ve had some coffee.”
So we put the kettle on again.

It’s the start of one of those blue midsummer days. The hills are parched and golden. There’s been no rain for months, and everything smells sweet and burnt. Maybe there’s ash in the air from a wildfire somewhere up north. But here the sky is still and clear. This is where the northern California ecosystem meets the southern California ecosystem, where rare things are in abundance – endangered species, intertidal areas, migrating birds.

I’m home after a long period away. I’d forgotten about the beauty here – its hypnotic properties, its ability to fuel endless daydreams.

The counterpoint is the isolation. At midday, tired of listening to nothing but the bees in the macadamia orchard, I decide to make the 45-minute long trip into town.

“I’ll get more peanut butter for the rat traps,” I say.

The main road mirrors the coastline, which curves in such a way that means the ocean is to the south, not the west. Several times I have to honk at a group of cattle standing in the road; they scatter and run for the hillsides. Looking west, I can see Point Conception – traditionally an opening into the celestial world. The Chumash called it Humqaq, the Western Gate; now it’s forbidden territory still, part of Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Ten minutes into my journey, something – a movement, a sound – captures my attention, and I turn to find a rat on the passenger seat. I pull over. It inches towards me so I get out of the car and open the doors.

A car approaches from the other direction. Inside is Josh, a legendary surfer I’ve known for years. He pulls over. He has surfboards stacked in the bed of his truck and I can smell the coconut of the wax.

“Are you okay?” he says.
“Fine,” I say. “It’s just that there’s a rat in my car, and I’m waiting for it to leave.”
He smiles.
“Ah, you’ll be fine then,” he says. “You’re a ranch girl.”
And he drives away, and as he does the rat leaps out, and I can continue my journey.

Later, in the pure dark you get in a place that has never known streetlights, I lie awake listening to the urgent movements of the rats in the walls. But it’s as Josh says – I’ll be fine, I’m a ranch girl.

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An Abstract Guide to Assimilation: How to Make a Home in a Foreign Country (REVISED)

By Miranda Ward | Published: 10 May, 2010

It’s not always easy to adapt to life in a foreign country. Differences in culture, language, geography, and history can make the experience intensely lonely, though the rewards are sweet. Because the transition is mostly mental, here are 5 abstract but proven tips to help you on the way to feeling fully assimilated, wherever you may have chosen to settle:

1. Answer one question first: “Why am I here?”

Start by asking yourself this: Why am I here? What drove me – or pulled me- to this place? The answers may be disarmingly simple. Maybe it was a story that inspired your move, maybe you want to set up an ordinary life abroad – to wake up, go to work, meet friends for a drink, buy toothpaste on the way home – or maybe you want to affect some change. The reasons themselves don’t matter. What matters is that you have some private understanding of why you want to be here, in this situation. When know that, you can start to let yourself feel comfortable in your new surroundings.

2. Don’t compare

It can be valuable to investigate the differences (and similarities!) between where you’re from and where you are. In a way, it’s irresistible. It’s part of why it’s so compelling to travel and to live abroad. But you cannot do it constantly, or you will never be able to look at where you are as a home.

The problem comes when the language of comparison is the only one we use to describe where we are. Sometimes the most important thing to do is this: put down your travel writer’s pen, rest your probing eyes, forget for a while to speak. Allow yourself to simply be here. Look up at the sky, the new, different sky, and see it just as it is: wide, littered with clouds and stars. Have coffee in a square and consider that this is just a coffee, this is just a square, this is just a little table from which I can see things happen. Run yourself a bath. These are your taps now; never mind that where you’re from, they’d be different. Let banalities, not revelations, rule your day.

3. Learn to become intimate with places, not just people

We tend to think of relationships in human terms, but we relate to places in much the same way, and by choosing to live abroad, we’re making a commitment to explore and understand our new home.

To cultivate the relationship, you’ll want to spend a lot of time walking and watching. Become a flâneur, a kind of wanderer or loiterer. Take the writer Edmund White’s advice. In a book on Paris, White writes that, “He (or she) is…in search of a private moment, not a lesson…it is the private Proustian touchstone – the madeleine, the tilting paving stone – that the flâneur is tracking down.” This sort of quest for something intensely personal, something real to hold on to, is what will make you feel intimate with your new surroundings.

4. Break bread

A relationship with the place you live is important, but it’s not enough to nourish the expat for long. To feel settled, you’ll also need to develop meaningful human relationships. The best way to do this is to eat with people – friends, lovers, co-workers, acquaintances. Invite them to dine at your place; accept  invitations to dine at theirs. Act graciously – cook your favorite recipe, or bring a bottle of wine or a special treat to thank your hosts.

The ritual of a shared meal is your lifeline in more than one way. We need to sustain ourselves not just on food but on company, and the intimacy of cooking, eating, and cleaning will bring you closer to the people in your life. Rooting yourself in a community will ultimately make the difference between feeling adrift and at home.

5. But after all that, don’t forget where you come from

The most important thing, in the end, is to be yourself. The narrator of Javiar Marias’ All Souls, a portrait of a foreigner in Oxford, marvels at one point that, “there’s no one here who knew me as a…child.” This is the great truth of living abroad. It’s lonely living somewhere that has no memory of you, and it’s also deliciously liberating. For me that’s part of the fun – the sense of freedom, the ability to reinvent myself.

But you cannot be an island. Even as you feel yourself becoming a part of the landscape, a local, someone who belongs – never forget where you’re from. Never forget that there’s a place where people did know you as a child. Adapting to a new place is not about erasing yourself. It’s about building upon what’s already there. Your funny accent, your behavioral quirks, your cultural history – it’s all part of the process.

Posted in Assignments | 2 Comments

An Oxford Love Story

By Miranda Ward | Published: 9 May, 2010

Photo by Miranda Ward

Photo by Miranda Ward

See, my son

time here turns into space

- Richard Wagner, Parsifal (1882)

Almost three years on, and every morning starts with a sleepy intimacy. The warmth of skin on skin is comforting when it’s so cold outside, and even in early May the house has a chill.

Today is a grey day, with a wind that buffets the rubbish bins and presses against the sash windows. I drink tea in my study, overlooking the garden. It’s our own English jungle, unkempt, the washing line and the compost bucket obscured by weeds and trees.

The first time I saw this house it was the same – always this wildness. He took me here in the dark of a late May night. I say ‘took me’ – but I went, I went willingly. On my first day in Oxford I got into a taxi with a man I’d just met and let him say the address of this house and as we passed through the city I closed my eyes and we moved fast.

Nowadays I cycle to the office. It’s is the best part of work, crossing Magdalen Bridge on my old Dutch bicycle, with the tower shimmering and the bells ringing. This morning as I start up the High Street the sky is clearing, the wind carrying the clouds away though it’s still cold.

The day I arrived was cloudless and hot. The first really glorious day of the season, I’d heard someone saying, so I went for a long walk. In Christ Church Meadow, amongst girls in sundresses and boys in shorts, I felt free. For a moment I became someone with no past and no future, no childhood, no family. No knowledge. Time slid away from me and I was alone with the city.

The same city now makes a mockery of my attempts to work, while the hour hand makes slow turns around the clock. The sun comes and goes, the wind smells sweet, the children at the primary school nearby are laughing. Late in the afternoon I emerge from a meeting and on a whim I go into a shop and buy three summer dresses. Soon I’ll be able to wear them; soon he and I will sit in our wild garden and watch the summer stars come out.

On my way to meet a friend for dinner, I run into him outside a pub. Our days are like this sometimes – full of shared but disconnected moments. I sit astride my bike and he gives me a kiss, says, “See you later, my love.” I’m somebody’s love. Here, in the street outside this pub, I’m somebody’s love.

We met at a pub, an old tucked-away tavern, with low ceilings and strong cider. There I turned to him and we spoke for the first time.

“Do you have a cigarette?” I said. He did, and he lit it for me, and that was it.

Hours later we wound up at a dingy bar off the High Street, where we have never since been, where I kissed him, or he kissed me, and in that moment of kissing, the freedom I had felt in Christ Church Meadow earlier was lost forever, but in its place was something better, something stronger.  No longer was I untied to this place, history-less, loveless, separate, alone.

I talk to my friend about what it’s like to be here. She’s Australian, knows how it is to have a family 5,000 miles away. After dinner we eat ice cream at the top of the steps of the Martyr’s Memorial. We watch a middle-aged couple kissing. The man reaches forward and squeezes her breast; the woman slides her hand into his pocket.

On my way home I pause on Broad Street to adjust the lights on my bicycle. A group of students pass. They’re American and full of an infectious sort of energy. One of them dances in the middle of the street, her arms in the air. Their demeanor makes no sense; it is so disproportionately merry for this drab Tuesday evening. I pull my scarf tighter around my neck. There’s something in my chest, a funny sort of almost-envy; I look at them and I think, I was like that, I’ve been there.

I remember thinking, as I woke in a strange bed the next morning, that something was happening, something I was powerless to predict or prevent – but then I forgot it, let it happen, because the way he offered me his phone number, the way he kissed me just before I got on my first Oxford bus, took my first trip as someone who belonged here, overshadowed everything else.

I watch the carefree Americans. The dancing girl has grabbed a boy’s hands; now they are waltzing past the grim little newsagent, past the dark shop windows and away from me. They do not even see me. Is that what happens here, after a time? We who were once golden fade into the golden walls, fated to watch a new bloom of youths bounding their way through the last weeks of spring. It is a nostalgic city, after all. What was it that Jan Morris wrote? “In recollection every Oxford summer day is warm, bright and sunlit, like the pictures of Oxford on the old postcards.”

But then, there’s this: when I get home he’s there. I undress and we lie together under the duvet, with the bedroom window open so that we can smell the night air, hear the shouts as the last drunks stagger home. And in the morning we will wake to discover our limbs tangled and we will stay too long in bed because it is just so sweet.

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5 (Paying) Travel Writing Markets

By Miranda Ward | Published: 4 May, 2010

1. The Guardian

One of the UK’s leading newspapers, with both an online and in-print travel section. Submit by pitch.

Travel Editors: Joanne O’Connor (online), Andy Pietrasik (print) // Email travel@gaurdian.co.uk (online), travel.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk (print)

2. Verge Magazine

Verge is “the magazine for people who travel with purpose. It explores ways to get out and see the world by volunteering, working and studying overseas. Our readers are typically young (17-40 yrs)”.

Verge will respond to successful queries within 8 weeks. Submit either a completed manuscript or a detailed query outlining your idea. Manuscripts may be submitted via email as a Microsoft Word document; queries should be pasted into the body of the email. First time contributors are paid a rate of $0.10 (CAD) per word.

Send submissions and/or queries to: contributing@vergemagazine.ca

3. World Hum

World Hum publishes a variety of travel features. To contribute, paste your submission or a pitch, as well as a short bio, directly into the body of your email. In the subject line of the email, include the section of the site you wish to contribute to. Submissions should not be more than 1,500 words. No multiple submissions.

Writing submissions should be no more than 1,500 words. Do not send multiple submissions. Include the section of the site you want to contribute to in the subject line of your email.”

Senior editor: Eva Holland // Email: dispatches@worldhum.com

Payment varies. World Hum may not be able to respond individually to every submission.

4. The Christian Science Monitor

The Christian Science Monitor’s “Home Forum” is looking for upbeat, personal essays from 400 to 800 words. The editors say: “These are first-person, nonfiction explorations of how you responded to a place, a person, a situation, an event, or happenings in everyday life. Tell a story; share a funny true tale. The humor should be gentle…We are always looking for essays on travel.”

Editors: Susan Leach and Marjorie Kehe // Email address for queries and submissions: The Home Forum

All material must be original and previously unpublished. Do not e-mail the section’s editors directly. They will not respond to individual submissions but will contact you within 3 weeks if they plan to use your essay. Include your contact information (e-mail address, daytime telephone, mailing address) and a word count with your submission.

5. Salon

Not a travel publication, but still a possible market for broader topics, Salon, “the award-winning online news and entertainment Web site, combines original investigative stories, breaking news, provocative personal essays and highly respected criticism”.

Submit via articles and story pitches via email, with the text of the query or article in the body of the email and “EDITORIAL SUBMISSIONS” in the subject line. Also include a brief bio, with “your experience and background as a writer and qualifications for writing a particular story. If you have clips you can send us via e-mail, or Web addresses of pages that contain your work, please send us a representative sampling.” Response time is about three weeks, though Salon cannot always respond to all queries.

Send submissions to the relevant editor; for instance, queries for the Life section should be directed to: life@salon.com

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An Abstract Guide to Assimilation: How to Make a Home in a Foreign Country

By Miranda Ward | Published: 4 May, 2010

It’s not always easy to adapt to life in a foreign country. Differences in culture, language, geography, and history can make the experience intensely lonely, though the rewards are sweet. Because the transition is mostly mental, here are 5 abstract but proven tips to help you on the way to feeling fully assimilated, wherever you may have chosen to settle:

1. Answer one question first: “Why am I here?”

Ask yourself this: Why am I here? What drove me – or pulled me- to this place? What do I hope to achieve? The answers may be disarmingly simple – perhaps you read a story about a far-off city long ago, and ever after aspired to live there. Maybe you just want to set up an ordinary life abroad – to wake up, go to work, meet friends for a drink, buy toothpaste on the way home – or maybe you want to affect some change. The reasons themselves don’t matter. What matters is that you have some private understanding of why you want to be here, in this situation. When you start to know that, you start to become able to let yourself feel comfortable in your new surroundings.

2. Don’t compare

Don’t spend all of your time analyzing the differences between where you’re from and where you are. Accept this at the outset: there are differences. Probably they will be vast, and many, and they will overwhelm you, and they will be all you can think about. Your dreams and memories will become confused. There will also be overlaps that you didn’t expect, and these too will become an obsession.

And it is, after all, valuable to investigate those differences, and those similarities. It’s irresistible. It’s part of why we do this, often, part of why it’s so compelling to travel and to live abroad. But you cannot do it constantly, or you will never be able to look at where you are as a home.

The problem comes when the language of comparison is the only one we use to describe where we are. Sometimes the most important thing to do is this: put down your travel writer’s pen, rest your probing eyes, forget for a while to speak. Allow yourself to simply be here. Look up at the sky, the new, different sky, and see it just as it is: wide, littered with clouds and stars. Have coffee in a square and consider that this is just a coffee, this is just a square, this is just a little table from which I can see things happen. Run yourself a bath. These are your taps now; never mind that where you’re from, they’d be different. Let yourself be ruled for a day by banalities, not revelations.

3. Learn to become intimate with places, not just people

We tend to think of relationships in human terms – we have friendships and partnerships with other people – but we relate to places in much the same way.

In order to cultivate a relationship with your adopted home, you’ll need to walk and to watch. Become a flâneur, a kind of loiterer, a wanderer. In a book on Paris, Edmund White writes that, “He (or she) is…in search of a private moment, not a lesson…it is the private Proustian touchstone – the madeleine, the tilting paving stone – that the flâneur is tracking down.” In order to adapt to your new surroundings, you’ll need this sort of quest for something intensely personal, something real to hold on to.

4. Break bread

Eat with people – friends, lovers, co-workers, just a few smiling faces from the pub. Invite them to dine at your place; accept  invitations to dine at theirs. Act graciously – cook your favourite recipe, or bring a bottle of wine or a special treat to thank your hosts. This ritual of a shared meal is your lifeline in more than one way. We need to sustain ourselves not just on food but on company, and the intimacy of cooking, eating, and cleaning will bring you closer to the people in your life. Rooting yourself in a community will ultimately make the difference between feeling adrift and at home.

5. But after all that, don’t forget where you come from

The narrator of Javiar Marias’ All Souls, a portrait of a foreigner in Oxford, marvels at one point that, “there’s no one here who knew me as a…child.” This is the great truth of living abroad. It’s lonely living somewhere that has no memory of you, and it’s also deliciously liberating. For me that’s part of the fun – the sense of freedom, the ability to reinvent myself.

But you cannot be an island. Even as you feel yourself becoming a part of the landscape, a local, someone who belongs – never forget where you’re from. Never forget that there’s a place where people did know you as a child. Adapting to a new place is not about erasing yourself. It’s about building upon what’s already there. Your funny accent, your behavioral quirks, your cultural history – it’s all part of the process.

Posted in Assignments | 2 Comments