“Travel changed my life in the sense that it helped me realize who I was,” actor and travel writer Andrew McCarthy explained at the annual Book Passage Travel Conference in Corte Madera, California. “Travel was my university. When I traveled, I grew up…I would travel for months alone…One day in Saigon I wrote down the story of that day. I started with the dialogue. I was an actor, I inherently knew characters and story arc. It was the same feeling I had when I was 15 years when I was in Oliver…I had that sense of ‘there I am ‘”…
“I am the guy from Pretty in Pink…I became famous when I was 22 years old and I have no idea what I would have been like had that not happened. Fame alters people in a cellular way…The writing I do for me.”
For those who haven’t followed his writing career, McCarthy is an editor-at- large at National Geographic Traveler, and has written for many newspapers and magazines. He has received six Lowell Thomas awards, and been named Travel Journalist of the Year by The Society of American Travel Writers. (see andrewmccarthy.com/writing)
The long-running travel conference for writers and photographers was founded by Book Passage in Marin County in the San Francisco Bay Area. Book Passage is one of the nation’s premier community-based independent bookstores. Inspired by this four-day conference and some of the best travel writers, bloggers and photographers in the world, I reconceived this Womantraveler blog, which I’ve kept since 2004. Happily McCarthy and I have something in common (!): Travel changed my life too. It gave me a framework for truly “seeing” and discovering the world, right around me and far away.
“I was a terrible student in school,” McCarthy said. “Writing to me seemed schoolish…Yet what I inherently had was my own voice…My mentor Keith Bellows of National Geographic Traveler cautioned, ‘Don’t be a travel writer, be a writer of travels.’…The lesson? ‘Tell me a story, don’t sell me a destination.’”
He went on to quote Mark Twain: “’Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrowmindedness.’”
McCarthy was in dialogue with Don George, a conference co-founder and chair, also an editor-at-large for National Geographic Traveler and author of several travel books. “I go out into the world with a plan, but it’s the deviation” from that – the serendipity – that makes the difference, George said.
“You can’t make those moments happen,” agreed McCarthy. “There are little moments, instances that can change your life. If I’ve been good at anything, it’s identifying that…You can live a long time off those little moments.”
“I take my kids anywhere. Because traveling with kids is saying, I trust you,” McCarthy went on. “…I write in chaos…I have three kids. I write in five minute stretches if I have to…I’ve been lucky in that I get to be creative every day of my life.”
