Guest Post by Megan Eaves, Author of This is China, a Guidebook for Teachers, Backpackers and Other Lunatics

When I wrote my first book, it poured out of me easily. A handbook about living in China, I wrote it while living in China, meaning that I was basically writing what I was living everyday.

I was thinking about this fact this morning. I am in the middle of composing a new ebook about studying abroad for a client that hired me via Elance and I realized that I had written about 1000 words in 30 minutes, which is totally record time for me. By comparison, normally it takes me about an hour to write a 500-word blog post. I started relating this fact to my husband and was reminded of those 6 months I spent in Zhejiang Province writing This Is China. The words poured out of me easily because what I was writing was firsthand experience that required no research. I was the expert and my words were the expert’s advice.

My second book, Insiders’ Guide to El Paso, was not so simple, although the concept and destination seem like they should be more straightforward than a book about China. After all, it’s EL PASO for goodness sake.

The fact of the matter is, despite living only a few hours from El Paso for much of my life, I knew relatively little about it when I started writing the book. I knew a lot less about El Paso than China, ironically.

Complicating matters was the fact that This Is China is more of a cultural handbook, with advice about daily living matters, travelling in China and teaching at Chinese schools, while Insiders’ Guide to El Paso is a guidebook with listings, relocation information, restaurant reviews and hotel descriptions. It required so. much. research.

Most people think that travel writing is probably a dream job. In reality, it is, but like any job, it is neither perfect nor fun all the time. Imagine trying to describe the difference between 25 different chain hotels – Sleep Inn, Comfort Inn, La Quinta, Days Inn – in small-town America and you’ll understand what I was faced with in writing the El Paso book.

I never thought I would be a book writer, mostly because I felt that I didn’t have the stamina to finish a whole book, particularly a fiction book. I still think fiction books would be much harder to write, but in fact, I realize now that book writing, like any other type of writing, is a simple act of fitness. You can’t expect to be a writer without writing. A LOT. Do you think that professional volleyball players expect to simply step on the court and bring their A-games? Certainly not, and the same is true of writing. You find, the more you do it, the easier it gets.

On my back burner the past few years is an unfinished manuscript – a fiction story – about a girl (more or less me) who goes travelling around Ireland. I’ve wavered between feeling that it was a regular fiction story and a young adult story, and I still have no end to it, but I know now that the end will come as it is supposed to, and when it is supposed to.

Aspiring writers occasionally ask me how I managed to break my way into travel writing. My answer is fairly simple: be willing to work for nothing. I am the published author of two books and still oftentimes work for only a pittance. I once read a blog by a guidebook writer who had written several Lonely Planet type guides to Guatemala. He said he’d vowed never to calculate his hourly wage, because guidebook writing is a 12-hour a day (or more) affair. First you have to visit the places, then write about them. It’s 8 hours of sightseeing (terrible, isn’t it?) followed by 8 hours of writing.

I write for the love of travel and the love of writing. I’ve never expected to make money out of it, and it’s only now I’m starting to barely make some money out of it. Finally.

Megan Eaves is a travel addict and has found herself writing about her world adventures for a living. She’s the author of two travel guidebooks and, currently, lives in her home state of New Mexico. More about her at www.meganeaveswriting.com