The alarm went off at the
inhumane hour of 2:00 A.M., Friday morning. I couldn't believe it was
starting all over again! I had only just returned home from climbing a
4,000 meter mountain on Tuesday. My thighs were still painful, and the
blisters on my heels hadn't yet closed up. Since the climb I had only
slept
a total of about ten hours because when I am home, I have to write and
submit. Falling asleep would mean skipping one or the other of those
steps, and that would mean not getting paid.
I showered, put on my
backpack, and rode my motorcycle into Kaohsiung where I took the long
bus ride to Taipei. Everything happens in the capital of Taiwan, but as
I am only home about five days a month, I can't see paying the hefty
rent and choose instead to live in Kaohsiung. I say live. But what I
mean is I store my things and pay rent and cable in Kaohsiung while
living out of a backpack.
I arrived in Taipei at
6:00 AM with two hours to kill before meeting my sponsor, so I went for
breakfast at the only restaurant open at that hour: McDonald's.
This is standard fare for an adventure writer. It's not that I'm afraid
to sample the more exotic fare of my various destinations; it's just
that McDonald's is often the only place with electrical lights and
running water.
An insane Frenchman,
Philipe, is my sponsor and partner in crime for many of my Taiwan
adventures, looked chipper and fresh after a leisurely sleep in his
nice, warm bed. I, on the other hand, was already exhausted, and the sun
was just rising. We headed into the mountains where I helped him
prepare a four day survival course about half of which I would
personally be teaching. Philipe and I have a deal whereby he takes me on
trips with his adventure company free of charge. He also gives me food
and covers my expenses. In return, I write stories about our adventures,
and he uses them to promote his business. I retain the rights to my
stories and sell them all over the world.
Philipe is a big
financial help. He is a good businessman and often arranges for my
stories to be purchased by large magazines. He gets increased publicity,
and I get to keep all of the money. Most recently he arranged, through a
contact in the government, for my stories to be purchased by the
Ministry of Tourism for use in their official publications. This is an
ongoing arrangement, and they will purchase one story per month. Each
sale covers about twenty-five percent of my monthly living expenses; so
when Philipe asks me to help out as a coach or trainer, I never
refuse. On this particular weekend, Philipe also insisted on
paying me some cash for my work as an instructor. Being a man of
principle, I refused twice. But luckily he offered three times. I
accepted the money as an accommodation to our friendship.
The
first day of the survival course was river tracing (a form of mountain
climbing that involves a steep waterway). Since I was helping as a
coach, I spent most of the day treading water in an ice-cold river,
lifting people up by their harness, and helping them scale a waterfall.
If God had wanted us to climb waterfalls, he would have given us wings
or gills or something. There is nothing natural about this activity, but
as an adventure writer/coach, I wound up scaling that waterfall twenty
times, once for each participant, pushing them bodily by the butt, and
often holding out my hand so they could step onto it like a ladder. I
lifted them up to the next foothold and the next and the next. We never
practiced that at journalism school!
On the second day, I
taught a course in man-killing traps, and primitive hunting spears.
Later, I taught tactical tree climbing. Once again, not only did I have
to scale the twenty-foot tree five or six times while setting up the
climb, but I had to climb up twenty times, once behind each participant,
again letting them use my hands or shoulders for foot rests. After
the last climber had finished, I had to scale up and dismantle the
equipment.
Sunday afternoon was
paint ball wars. Monday morning was more survival training. Monday
night, we returned to Taipei at 9:00 PM. I imagine that the
participants and Philipe went home, took a long hot shower, and went to
sleep. But for me the day was just beginning. Unable to return to
Kaohsiung because of meetings I had scheduled the next day, I went to
the apartment of the magazine I write for in Taipei and pulled an
all-nighter writing up the story from the weekend's activities. I
submitted the story to 150 magazines and then slept three hours.
Tuesday morning I had a
meeting with the US State Department regarding a story I was doing on an
American who had disappeared in the mountains of Taiwan. My next major
story would be about me leading a manhunt in search of his dead body.
Luckily, they were able to provide me with a list of no less than six
mountain routes which he may have taken. That would mean two weeks in
the bush for me. Luckily, this was an instance where one of my sponsors
had arranged for a foundation to pay me for the search. Afterwards I
would try to sell the story to magazines, but I had other work to do
before leaving.
I left the state
department and stopped off for an interview at an NGO, a
Non-Governmental Organization associated with the United Nations that
works in the field of human trafficking. In between
adventure gigs, I take work as a freelance correspondent. Adventure is
my favorite kind of writing, but the market is smaller than the market
for news writing. Also, adventures take a long time. It could take
months to cross a desert or climb a mountain. News stories, on the other
hand, can often be done in one day. Sometimes, as in this case, I could
do a single interview, which lasted two hours, then go home and write
1,000 words, and get paid.
My correspondence work is
similar to my adventure writing. As a rule, I pick subjects and
locations which are of interest to me. I tend to enjoy physically
demanding or dangerous stories, so I do investigative reports about
human trafficking, religious cults, the Mafia, the drug trade, and war
correspondence. I decide on a story. I go write it. Then I query
it to news magazines. Sometimes I get assignments from magazines in
advance. Sometimes I risk my life, get a great story, and no one buys
it. This is all part of the game. If I were looking for security I
would go home and get a job at the post office.
Tuesday night, I had a
very emotional dinner with the distraught mother of the young man whose
body I was going to go look for. He became a real person to me, and the
story became harder. Later that night, I wrote up the day's
interviews, submitted the stories, slept a few hours, and then headed
back to Kaohsiung. I arrived in Kaohsiung on Wednesday evening with only
a half hour to spare until my next interview. I rode straight from the
bus station to the home of the special advisor to the president to do an
interview about Taiwan independence. The interview ran until after
eleven. Then I went home, wrote up the story, and submitted it. Thursday
morning I slept in a little. Then I got on line. I spent four hours
doing keyword searches which resulted in three new magazines where I
submitted my writing.
From the internet cafe I
went straight to my next interview with an ex-cult member. We finished
after five o'clock. I sat down, wrote the story, submitted it, and
collapsed. When I woke up, I had only a few hours to complete an
assignment about the war in Myanmar, which I managed to submit just in
time to get two hours of sleep before getting on the bus to go back to
Taipei.
This time in Taipei, I
was meeting with Philipe to go rock climbing and sea kayaking. I am
planning to paddle a kayak all the way around Taiwan. I suspect that I
will be the first person ever to have done this. The magazine is using
this as a publicity opportunity, and a lot of people are giving me
money. In the interim I am doing more journalism, heading to Thailand
and Myanmar to continue writing about human trafficking, and hopefully
to see war first hand. In Thailand, instead of taking an
apartment, I will be living in a kickboxing training camp, so I can
complete a series of articles and a book about Muy Thai.
In addition to my
articles, I always have at least one book going. If writing articles is
your life, then you realize that your life has been reduced to neat
little 1,000 word spurts. Well, I don't want my life reduced to a
thousand words, so I take all of the other thousands of words I have
written, and those elements of my own personality which I wish to write,
and I make them into books. In between researching, writing, climbing,
and boxing, I find time to send my books out to publishers.
Can you make a living as
an adventure writer? Most people would tell you no. But I am able to do
it because I promote myself shamelessly. My biggest conflict is which
side of the camera I should be on. My queries are so interesting
that often, instead of buying an article I have written, newspapers want
to run articles about me. Until a few months ago, the amount written by
me and the amount 
written
about me were about even. It is narcissistic I know, but this is a
business and this is how I make money. If people have never heard of me,
they would never buy my books or articles.
Even with shameless acts
of self-promotion, the money is slow in coming. You get paid after
publication. Some magazines buy in November for publication in February
and don't pay until August. Books are the slowest. From the time
you have signed a contract to the time the book goes on sale is often
more than one year. Then, once it is selling, you get paid quarterly.
Even J. K. Rowling, the author who created Harry Potter, probably didn't
see any serious money until the end of the second year after she had
signed the contract.
So, yes, you can get by
as an adventure writer. Robert Young Pelton did it. Tim Cahill did it.
John Krakauer did it and so can you. But you have to work hard and
constantly. You don't have to do it the way I do. You should find
your own skill set, and a way of working which works for you. There are
travel writers who make millions without ever traveling. Robert Young
Pelton has seen more combat than I have, and John Krakauer is a much
better mountain climber than I will ever be. We all have to find our own
way. But the universal truths are work hard, don't take no for an
answer, make it happen (don't wait for it to happen), and most
importantly, WRITE and SUBMIT.
Magazine