Category Archives: travel

advice, Business, editorial, gear, lifestyle, photography, travel

Interview With…Jason Demant

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Today we have an interview to share with Freelance-Zone readers. Jason Demant is a writer and traveler who has recently founded UnAnchor, a travel itenerary site. Enjoy!                          – Catherine 

Jason Demant
Jason Demant

1. What is your background in writing and travel?

My background in writing is little to none to be honest. It’s been an interesting experience the last year realizing how much time I now spend writing. To my surprise though, I’ve really enjoyed it. In addition to blogging, I’ve started writing occasionally for other blogs and writing travel itineraries as well.

In terms of travel, I’ve spent the last 10 months on the road across Asia. I’m starting to have a passport that I’m really proud of. Before this big trip though, I did the standard American corporate-life vacation thing. Once a year, I took off one to two weeks (two, only if I was lucky) and saw as many cities and countries as possible. Always returning more exhausted than when I left. I was able to visit the Middle East, South America and Europe twice.

2. What is UnAnchor and how did the idea for it come about?

UnAnchor is a site to find specific, do-it-yourself travel itineraries. I like to think of it as an “app store” for travel itineraries. However, UnAnchor is also quite new. So, while that’s the eventual goal, right now a lot of my focus with UnAnchor is finding the experts to write itineraries. All itinerary writers set their own price on the itinerary (starting at $0.99) and keep 75% from each one they sale. However, for the first 50 itineraries written, we’re jumping that to 90%.

The idea initially came from a previous co-worker, now friend, of mine and has been further refined through my own travel experiences. It’s been frustrating figuring out how to use public transportation, how to do an activity without joining an expensive tour, and choosing what to do in a city with hundreds of tourist options. The idea is that a detailed itinerary will solve all of these frustrations. It will explain how to use public transportation and give you a detailed map to show you how to drive or walk to a destination. If you only have 1, 2, or 3 days in a city, it will tell you the things you absolutely must see.

3. Can you share any savvy travel tips with readers? Continue reading Interview With…Jason Demant →

advice, blogging, travel

Freelance Travel and the Perils of Being a Road Warrior

IndieWax Youngstown Ohio record storesI’m sitting in a hotel room in Pennsylvania watching a news report about a situation I just missed–the bomb squad was called out in Pittsburgh after a suspicious package was discovered somewhere in the city. I shudder to think of what might have happened to my deadlines if I had gotten caught in a horrific traffic snarl that probably followed. But that’s not among the perils of being a freelance road warrior I’m thinking of…

I knew this week that the second I pulled out of the driveway to go on my Chicago to New York City road trip, I’d get hit six ways from Sunday with things I had hoped to avoid dealing with until I got back. Freelance-Zone.com got several requests from potential sponsors for rate cards and other information, an interview I’d been waiting on finally came in from the cold, and I even got an offer for some additional freelance work writing copy for one of my previous clients.

Naturally all this stuff came in when I was in no-signal areas, doing my travel reviews of record stores and restaurants, or trying to write up material to make deadline for the clients that I did NOT put on hold during all of this travel and discovery.

23 record stores later, I am still trying to catch up with all the e-mails and requests for my time. And I’m STILL on the road!

The perils of freelancing from the road range from the mundane–trying to get a seat in a coffee shop next to an outlet so you can deal with a dying laptop battery and make deadline…to the serious–trying to avoid having my travel budget dinged by gotcha charges, excessive fees and highway tolls and other expenses.

Lessons learned?

Essential road warrior gear for freelancers should include a wireless headset for your cell phone, a spare battery for your laptop, and a cell phone capable of using Google Maps with the Location Services feature. I can’t tell you how many times I would have gotten hopelessly lost without the Location Services function of the iPhone displaying the little blue dot telling me exactly where I was on both my route AND in terms of the directions I had gotten from Google Maps. On or off track, the little blue dot tells all and it shows you in SECONDS whether you’ve zigged when you should have zagged.

I’ll do a complete post on essential freelance travel gear later, but for now, suffice it to say that you should always expect your battery to die when you need it most, you should always count on getting lost just when you NEED to be in a certain town on time, and never make plans to stay longer than absolutely necessary—you’ll find a way to need to be someplace else on that day you were planning to sleep in. Continue reading Freelance Travel and the Perils of Being a Road Warrior →

advice, travel

Cleveland Ohio: Freelancer-Friendly

Cleveland Ohio Freelancer Friendly

by Joe Wallace

I’ve been traveling across the U.S. in the last seven days, blogging about independent record stores and trying to maintain my regular freelance clients at the same time. It’s been a tricky journey in spots; the closer I got to NYC, the more difficult it became to find wi-fi hotspots along the way so I could meet my deadlines while staying the course on the long drives to and from the indie record stores I’m writing about.

One of the most freelancer-friendly cities I’ve visited so far has to be Cleveland, Ohio. More specifically, my experiences were in Cleveland Heights–which I’m not sure is an actual township outside Cleveland proper or a district of Cleveland.

I am a new Cleveland fan now for several reasons–for starters, it wasn’t hard to find a place to connect (for free) and post my work. There were plenty of inexpensive hotels to choose from, and everyone I met there was super-friendly–offering plenty of help for my blogging work. Record store owners even told me where the competition is located in Cleveland so I could make a more complete report!

But hands down, the most impressive thing for a hungry, road-weary freelancer is the quality of the food in any place where the vehicle gets parked for the night. Cleveland wins first prize in this categoy. ALL the restaurants I enjoyed there had big menus priced under ten dollars and were so massive that I got two, even three meals out of the bargain. And make no mistake–this was GOOD food, not barely adequate crap.

My hat is off to Tommy’s Restaurant (awesome breakfasts), to the Winking Lizard Tavern (great dinner), and Phoenix Coffee, all located along the same stretch of Coventry Road in Cleveland Heights. You might notice that I only list two actual restaurants–that’s because the previously mentioned food portions were so massive I didn’t NEED to eat anywhere else.

As a city, Cleveland has a lot to offer a music journalist and record store lover like me…as a freelancer it also is an easy place to work.

advice, blogging, editorial, travel

Being a Freelance Road Warrior: Musings on Travel, Writing

IMG_0113.JPG by Joe Wallace

Like the pic? It’s from a Cleveland night spot adjacent to the hotel I stayed in on the first leg of my current 12-day road trip from Chicago to NYC. I’m blogging at Turntabling.net about indie record stores between the two points, and making copious notes of my experiences to share with you here.

A prolonged stretch of travel writing has its own challenges. When I did this last year from Chicago to San Antonio, Texas, I didn’t really know what to expect, but I had the luxury of not worrying about servicing freelance clients while on the road. This time I decided to add that challenge to the mix and see what happens.

My plan was to use the new free-for-all wi-fi service at Starbucks, since the coffee chain seems to be everywhere. I figured at the very very least I might have to drive or walk to the nearest coffee shop to get connectivity and post away.

That strategy worked for a while. In Cleveland, which is quite possibly one of THE most freelancer-friendly cities in the U.S. it was child’s play to get a connection and file my work for my clients. Ditto for Pittsburgh, which had plenty of free wi-fi to go around.

Not so much once I got closer to the East Coast. In Allentown I had trouble connecting to the hotel’s TWO wi-fi servers, and when I hit Newark, I learned that not only does Starbucks seem to be quite scarce here (at least in the vicinity where I am staying near Penn Station) but there’s no Panera Bread, either. And the hotel I’m in is quite happy to charge me to connect in addition to the room fee.

I bit the bullet and paid the extra usury for wireless Internet in order to keep current with my clients, but I have to say, it’s a bad idea to depend on that free wi-fi service on a road trip unless you’ve done your homework first–what I should have done was check each city on my itinerary via Yelp.com or some other restaurant reviewer site to see if I’d be able to depend on the free stuff for the entire trip. I’d have saved myself some extra hotel charges and a lot of headaches trying to find an office-away-from-the-office. It was via Yelp that I learned that Newark is short on the free wi-fi near where I’m staying, and via Yelp that I found plenty of places in Greenwich Village to connect instead. A 2o minute train ride into NYC was the cure for many of my problems…

In my next report, a list of the freelancer-friendly places I’ve been so far. Continue reading Being a Freelance Road Warrior: Musings on Travel, Writing →

blogging, editorial, travel

A Freelance Travel Writing Experiment

Travel Writing Destination NYCby Joe Wallace

I love travel, and I love travel writing. So why haven’t I done that much in 2010? Because I let myself get tied down to a freelance gig that required me to show up onsite several days a week or take meetings that tied me to the company’s secure site which was tricky to access even ONSITE.

So I wound up being tied to a desk. It was worth it financially–I built up my war chest and was able to finish the project, choose not to renew with that client and concentrate on my own work after the project was done.

And now I’m taking full advantage by doing some travel and travel blogging.

Specifically, I’m doing a cross country trek to blog about indie record stores between Chicago, Illinois and New York City. It’s called Vinyl Road Rage, and I’m taking a dozen days on the road, blogging the whole way for Turntabling.net.

But I’ll also be posting along the way for Freelance-Zone.com because the issues I’ll be facing on the road are travel writing issues. How do I connect on the road? How do I juggle my travel with my other clients–who I won’t be putting on hold during the trip? How will THAT work out? I will give reports along the way about the trials, tribulations, almost-busted deadlines and much more.

After all, the idea of being a freelancer is being FREE. If I’m true to the freelance ideal, I should be able to travel for nearly two weeks, make my freelance clients happy AND post about it all here…right? Let’s take this journey together and see what happens. My road trip begins today, Thursday August 12, 2010…time to hit the road!

–Joe Wallace

editorial, featured, lifestyle, photography, resources, travel

“And The Plot Thickens” Weekend Novel Writing Workshop

Today we are excited to bring Freelance-Zone readers an up-close look at “And The Plot Thickens”, a novel writing workshop in Rhode Island taking place later this month…

LobbyA11. How did the idea for the “And The Plot Thickens” workshop come about, and when is it?

‘And The Plot Thickens… How to develop a novel’ is held on August 28 & 29 2010.

The idea came about because we are passionate about the Arts. From the regular RISDA exhibitions we hold in our lobby, our series of arts inspired events and the local arts society we support, it shows in everything we do…We wanted to help people discover their own passion and writing their first novel is a dream that many of us have. We also realized that with people taking shorter weekends because of the economy, they wanted to do something more worthwhile with their time away – this workshop allows them to pursue their dream, share experiences and make new friends while spending the weekend in a wonderful hotel in a beautiful city.

2.  Who will be leading this workshop and what are that person’s qualifications?

Joanna Howard is a published author and holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Denver, and MFA in fiction writing from Bowling Green State University. She currently teaches fiction at Brown University. Joanna is the author of ‘On the Winding Stair’ (Boa Editions, 2009) a collection of short stories which Publisher’s Weekly described as “14 tales of startling description and beauty.”  She is also the author of ‘In the Colorless Round’ (Noemi, 2007), a short collection of prose with artwork by Rikki Ducornet . Her publications also include numerous book reviews in Review of Contemporary Fiction and American Book Review, and she has worked as a co-translator on Marcel Cohen’s Walls (Black Square 2009) and on Frederic Boyer’s Cows (forthcoming from Noemi Press). Her stories appear in anthologies and journals including Conjunctions, The Chicago Review, Quarterly West, and American Letters and Commentary. Howard is a fiction editor for Tarpaulin Sky magazine, She has also edited for Denver Quarterly and other journals.

3. What will be covered in these two days?

Each day will be structured by a series of morning and afternoon sessions, which will include a range of writing exercises, workshops, and seminar style discussions.

Budding writers will learn practical skills for how to shape their ideas into a novel, discover how to create memorable characters and compelling narratives. They will examine their favorite novels and dissect what makes them great pieces of fiction. Reading-out exercises will give them the opportunity for feedback on material they have already written and advice on how to develop and shape their drafts. Joanna will share her experience and advice on how to talk about and present ideas to an audience and how to get that first novel published. Continue reading “And The Plot Thickens” Weekend Novel Writing Workshop →