Writing Travel Memoir, Fear Of Judgment, Fear Of Failure, And Journaling With J.F. Penn

What do you need to consider when writing travel memoir? How fear of judgment and fear of failure are real issues even for established authors, and more in these selected excerpts from interviews with J.F. Penn around Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways.

In this episode, I talk about:

* How Pilgrimage fits across several sub-categories of the travel genre and the perils of writing cross-genre 

* Fear of sharing personal aspects in the memoir, fear of launch, fear of failure, fear of judgment, and being terrified of doing a Kickstarter (recorded several days before the launch)

* How journals can be the basis of writing a travel memoir, structuring a book around theme, and why you have to think of the reader

Jo Frances Penn with Pilgrimage

I have a Kickstarter running as this goes out for my new travel memoir / solo walking book, Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways, and I’ve been doing interviews on the topic on various shows, so I wanted to share some snippets.

It might also introduce you to new shows that you might enjoy and you can find them all on your podcast app, wherever you’re listening to this. The clips are from Travel Writing World, Wish I’d Known Then, and Sacred Steps, and I was also on Into the Woods.

I’ve included different clips on my Books and Travel Podcast, more about the walking than the writing side, so you can also listen there. 

I also wanted to let you know that we reached the stretch goal — even though I was scared of not making it!

All backers will get an extra audio with a transcript on how I turned hundreds of pages of hand-written journal entries and hundreds of photos into a finished travel memoir.

This will only go to backers, so even if you’re not that interested in pilgrimage, you might want my tips on writing travel memoir, and you can back the campaign with just a few pounds. 

Just go to JFPenn.com/pilgrimage and that will redirect to the Kickstarter until 5 Feb, after which it will take you to where the book will be available later in the year. So let’s get into it. 

In this clip from the Travel Writing World podcast with Jeremy Bassetti, I talk about how Pilgrimage is sits across different sub-genres of the travel niche. 

J.F. Penn – Pilgrimage and Perspective

Transcript of the clip from Travel Writing World