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CH5B
A Little Background on “Who Needs a Road?”

I was in Al’s office, going over the photographs for the article that the magazine had bought, when Al asked if I ever considered sponsors. “What for?” I asked.

My Willys Jeep had served me well. With a camper trailer, I drove all across Europe and through the Iron Curtain countries into Russia. Had I not been arrested in Russia and thrown into jail for a couple of months, I would have continued on to Asia. The magazine had already bought my story on Russia, and with a check in my pocket, I was off to Spain where my Jeep was awaiting me. I intended to continue on overland to Singapore.

“I think I can get you a Toyota,” Al said.

“Never heard of it,” I fired back. This was in 1965, and Toyota wasn’t well known in the U.S., nor any other place around the world for that matter. Japan back then had the reputation of manufacturing cheap Tinker toys and Playboy firecrackers. Besides, even if l had heard of it, it didn’t matter. I had my Jeep waiting in Spain.

Al is a real salesman. He can outdo a car salesman. I still am not quite sure how he did it, but I agreed to give him a few weeks while I waited at my home in California – he did a little promotion. When he phoned two weeks later, he said he had a new Toyota for me, plus products from 30 sponsors, and $25,000 in the bank. “But do I need that Toyota?” I asked. “I still have my Jeep.”

He asked me to come to New York as quickly as possible, He said I could bunk with him at his posh apartment on 55th Avenue. I did. I went to New York and moved in with him. When I woke up one morning, a brand new Toyota Land Cruiser appeared outside our door. “It is yours, all yours,” Al said, “and it’s free.” What he didn’t tell me, until later, was all I had to do was drive it around the world. What a romantic thought. Around the world! The only trouble was, I didn’t want to drive around the world. I only wanted to drive from Europe to Asia over the Asian Highway. But Al had a different idea.

That was a number of years ago. Until all these recent world troubles began, driving from Europe to Asia was not unusual. Travelers were making the trip in converted buses, Mini Mokes, Jeeps, bicycles, and two Frenchmen even tried it on skateboards. My reason for the drive was that I wanted to have my own rugged four-wheel drive vehicle in Southeast Asia and to investigate some of the out-of-the-way sites on my way there.

The plan at first seemed to work. I bought a new Willys Jeep in America and shipped it aboard across the Atlantic to France. In Paris, I found a back-alley travel agent who boasted he could arrange a visa anywhere. Which they did: a fake visa. In three weeks, with a couple hundred dollars less in my bank account, I had a visa to motor across the Soviet Union to reach Asia. Six weeks later, while making an exit from the country, I was arrested at the border. The charge was spying, but after two months, without explanation, I was freed. But now I was also broke. I had to leave my Jeep in Spain and return to America to raise more funds for my trip.

I was solvent again when Argosy bought my story on Russia. And then I met Al Podell. There was another catch, aside from driving around the world. Al wanted to go with me. Now it was a Toyota, a camper, an extra body. No, I didn’t want anyone tagging along. “But I already have a Jeep in Spain,” I explained.

“I’ve raised $24,000!” he emphasized.

The next day, I was in New York, and I was about to learn something about the promotion game.

“There’s only one catch,” Al said.

“Your mother’s coming too,” I said.

“No. I needed a peg to hitch it on.”

“Hitch what on?” There was that word again. As I said, I didn’t understand New York PR talk. Al explained. To sell the trip, it had to be more than a drive to Asia. He had us booked for a motor trip around the world-the longest motor trip, non-repetitive miles, ever to be attempted.

This wasn’t what I had in mind. “What about your job?” I said.

“Never mind that,” he answered. “I quit.” “You did what?”

“I quit,” he repeated, only louder this time.

He quit, and I was stuck with the ex-picture editor of Argosy.

So began my motor trip around the world, 42,500 miles. Such a trip today-across North Africa, through the Middle East to Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and Burma, and then from South America up through Central America to the U.S.-would be impossible.

Toyota Motors was the sponsor, along with more than a dozen other companies. For each of them, I had to prove the world was a safe place in which to live and sell their products. An idealistic dream! The tragedy was that instead of the world becoming better for the traveler, as we all believed it would, conditions have grown worse. No longer can we hop in a car and drive not only from Europe to Asia but from one country to the next. Instead of announcing a new beginning for travel, my motor trip heralded the end of overland travel.

Looking back, in spite of difficulties, the trip did have its compensations; there were humorous moments, along with trying ones. It’s sad that it was the last motor trip anyone can make around the world.

At Al’s apartment, I spent a week answering the doorbell and telephone. A new Toyota Land Cruiser appeared on the street beneath my window, followed by a tent camper on two wheels. “It sleeps eight,” Al said proudly.

The doorbell continued to ring. Delivery boys appeared. Firestone high-flotation tires, plus an extra set. Picnic boxes. Gasoline stoves. Lanterns. Vacuum bottles. Two fast-erecting pop-up tents; they made a mess out the living room when they popped up, and we couldn’t get them down.

For our wearing comfort, the sponsors said, we needed raincoats, jackets, sports shirts, knit-shirts, insulated underwear, regular underwear, socks, gloves, trousers. Hat Corporation of America came across with cowboy hats and desert hats, safari hats and rain hats, cold weather hats and tropical hats.

There was more. Shoes, fourteen pairs. Not for the expedition but fourteen for each member. Then flashlight batteries, six cases, seven flashlights. Over one hundred aerosol cans with everything from shave cream to dog repellent. An archery company, with an assignment from a magazine, sent four bows and hundreds of arrows. An insect company sent twenty-two cases-repeat, twenty-two cases-of insect repellent, insecticide, disinfectant, car wax and shoe polish.

And still more: sun glasses and suntan oils, anti-freeze and desert coolant for the radiator, floor mats and mud guards, a year’s supply of paper plates and cups, fishing rods and fishing reels, a portable car massager and cigarette lighters that worked from solar energy. And a complete assortment of Pentax cameras and all the accessories to go with them.

There was a catch, and it was not Al’s mother. We had to advertise each company’s products. This meant taking along a photographer. Then a copywriter. Another journalist was added. We now had five, which meant we would need my jeep in Spain after all.

Public relations representatives appeared with stacks of typewritten sheets of instructions. A suntan lotion PR sales woman had five hundred mimeographed questionnaires for us to hand out, to see “what the natives use along the way for suntan oil.” The press agent for a clothing company wanted photos taken at “photogenic waterholes, especially with crocodiles and elephants and interesting things like that.” Another manufacturer wanted photos of us in woolen sweaters in front of the Taj Mahal. The Bourbon Institute of America arranged for us to pick up cases of Kentucky Bourbon in major cities around the world.

Imagine trying to drive with such a load. I couldn’t put on the brakes without boxes of paper cups hitting me on the head, or one hundred flashlight batteries falling out when I opened the glove box. In desperation, when we were in Spain, I unloaded a half-ton of supplies on a band of roaming Gypsies. But then in Jerez, the wine capital of Spain, Gonzales Bodega, not wanting to be outdone by our New York sponsors, presented us with six cases of brandy and another six of sherry. Now when I threw on the brakes, I was threatened by a couple cases of brandy sailing through the windscreen.

Sponsorship for exploration and major expeditions, where costs are high, is often necessary, but one can overdo it. Since that first motor trip around the world, I decided to limit sponsors to only a few sponsors. Besides, I hate driving around with labels and logos plastered all over my vehicles, like a Formula One racecar. And how miserable it can be posing in woolen sweaters in front of the Taj Mahal in India in 110-degree heat-just to please a sponsor.

Some sponsor, however, are easier to satisfy than others. I didn’t mind the Bourbon Institute of America. They gave us six cases of whiskey, shipped ahead and waiting for us in capital cities along our route. All we had to do was drink the bourbon.

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CH5A
A WORD ABOUT SPONSORS

It might sound ideal, finding a sponsor and have someone else pay your bills. But remember, nothing is free. Travel writers are known for the freebies they get, but at the same time as it may be free, they have to be cautious. I was excited when the world famous Manila Hotel in Manila offered me a room.

The old Manila Hotel, built in 1912 by the U.S. Corps of Engineers, is a showpiece of the Philippines. It was the meeting place for Americans during the colonial period, and became General Douglas Macarthur’s headquarters in 1935. The hotel withstood the bombing of World War II, and bounced back after the war. Walking through the front door, you can feel the opulence and wealth. That’s the feeling I had when I entered the front door with my suitcase and Hermes typewriter. An added surprise came when the management gave me the Presidential Suite. What splendor, and that even included a private swimming pool. It all sounds well and good, but let’s look at the bottom line. The chambermaid, the bellhops, the doorman, the consigners, they all didn’t know I was a travel writer on a budget and not a big spender. I don’t have big tips to hand out to all those lined up at departure time. So what do I do? I tiptoe out of my room, carrying my own luggage, and look down the long hall hoping no one is in sight. No one. I managed to make it to the front desk. I am always a bit apprehensive when I ask for my bill, even when I am told beforehand that the room is complimentary. I avoided taking items from the mini bar, as the prices are outrageous, and I want to make sure when I scan the bill that I wasn’t charged for in-house movies. I scanned the channels, but I didn’t actually request a movie. I get through that hurdle, and tell them I paid cash for my meals, while in actuality I ate in a noodle shop in town. But then comes something I never expected. This can’t be. It’s the tax.

The management can give you a free room, but they cannot disavow the government tax. So I was in a hotel room that cost US$1,500 a night, and the tax is 13%. A four-star hotel in Makati would have cost me less money. But it’s too late now, and still, it’s not over. There’s the door man and the two bellboys who grab my luggage and camera bag, and the third boy who goes to open the trunk of the hotel limousine with its white embroidered doilies on the back of the seats, and I have to tell them that I don’t want the limousine. I want a taxi. No, not a hotel taxi. A public taxi, one that they have to call up from the street. It’s all very embarrassing. It’s part of the learning experience. Nothing is free.

Freebies for travel writers are hard to come by in America and Europe; but in Asia it’s very much a barter society. Hotels, air tickets, bus and train tickets, tours, cruises, rental cars and any number of services, all in exchange for write-ups in magazines and newspapers. For ten years, I had a full travel page with the Bangkok Post every Monday. Aside from the text, I had to provide photographs. My contract with the Post paid a flat fee with no travel allowances or expenses. I could, however, solicit my own transportation and accommodation. For ten years, I traveled the world, and it didn’t cost me a cent. I not only sent back weekly travel destination stories for the newspaper, I was able to gather material and photographs or magazines stories.

There’s no doubt about it, freebies are a good deal for the writer, but what are the sponsors getting? They actually are the ones who are benefiting. Advertising costs money, a great deal of money, and for giving away a hotel room, a free car or an airline ticket, they get a page in a newspaper and two or three pages in a magazine .

.Advertisements in the media-newspapers, magazines, radio and TV-can cost them many thousands of dollars. Take, for example, The Academy Awards telecast on ABC Network. The cost for a 30-second commercial in 2007 was $80.7 million.

Editors don’t want writers to mention sponsors’ names for they feel sponsors should pay for advertisements, and that’s understandable. But there are ways that I learned to getting around this. I figure out a way to work the sponsor’s name into the text, and I use photographs that how their products. It’s easy if it’s a hotel or car rental agency. Furthermore, a plus for the advertisers is that such writing is not a commercial advertisement, and people are generally more inclined to read the story with photographs than they would read an ad.

Editors will take advantage of novice writers, and there i not much the writer can do but go along with the system until he is established and has credibility as a writer. I remember an incident when I made a pitch to the editors of National Geographic for a story I had in mind. I had met a surveyor who was working for National Geodetic Survey and was mapping the Choco Jungle in Columbia. It sounded like a marvelous story for the Geographic so I went to Washington to talk to the editors. I was surprised at how well I was received. “Yes, it sounds like a good idea for a story,” the editor said. I was elated. Now let’s see what you can do.” There was no contract; no assignment; but Geographic was giving me a chance. It was up to me. What a lark. I learned later they do that with many writers who have a possible story idea. String writers along, that’s their motto. The magazine has nothing to lose. It’s their policy-don’t tum anyone down. They have their reason, which I learned later. The story told, and it’s quite reliable, is that a young Norwegian anthropologist went to the Geographic office in Washington and wanted to see the editor. The year was 1948. The man had an idea. He wanted to build a balsa wood raft and drift from South America across the Pacific to prove that the Polynesians came from South America. The editor wondered who this nut was. Float in a raft across the vast Pacific. How insane. The man was a joke, and sent from one office to another, and each time he gave his sales pitch. He eventually realized he was being made a fool by the staff. The anthropologist went back to Norway, gathered a few other scientists who had the spirit for adventure and raised enough money to sponsor the voyage himself. They named the balsa raft Kon Tiki and the voyage became the most successful adventure of the century. Their adventure appeared in magazines around the world and a documentary for both the silver screen and television became a sensation. National Geographic had lost out on the biggest story of all time.

Thereafter, the management of National Geographic issued the order that no project, no matter how outrageous it may sound, was to be turned down. I surmised after learning the facts about National Geographic that my idea about a story on mapping the Choco jungle fell into the same category. But when I look back, I can’t blame the editors. My photography with a cheap, one-lens Retina camera was hardly National Geographic stuff. I guess they just didn’t want to discourage me. But I did experience another letdown by the magazine, and this was very unethical, I had been living on Tahiti. Back in those years, ne could get a berth aboard a copra boat and voyage to II the remote islands for a fare that was a pittance. I made one voyage to the low-lying Tuamotu Islands. There, I discovered some very courageous men-pearl divers. These remarkable men could dive down to the ocean floor some 120 feet below without the aid of scuba or compressed air. They dove with nothing more than a tiny pair of homemade goggles. Some divers, I was told, reached depths farther than 120 feet. What a story for National Geographic. I didn’t have proper underwater camera equipment, but if l could get an assignment to do the story, would get the equipment. I went to Washington and got an appointment with the picture editor. With excitement! I met the editor-I won’t mention his name-in his office and told him about the pearl divers of the Tuamotus. He wasn’t interested. He probably saw me with my Retina camera. Heart fallen, I left the office and didn’t pursue the idea any further. Then, about three of four years later, the story appeared in National Geographic. I couldn’t believe it. Of course, it was a beautiful story with some very fine photography, but still, it was my story and my idea. I went back to the Geographic office but played it cool. I went to see the picture editor with the pretense that I had some other ideas for stories. He didn’t remember me from the past. On his shelf were National Geographic magazines. Casually I asked him how they get their story ideas, and before he could reply I reached up and pulled down from the shelf the issue with the pearl diver story. I turned to the story and asked him how he came about getting the story, “Oh, that,” he said, “I had a friend who had a boat and was sailing to the Pacific and I told him about the pearl divers. I thought it would make a good story.”

What do you do?

The only salvation is to move on. Forget it. As my friend Al Podell, who was the picture editor for Argosy when I began writing for the magazine, said to me, “To get a sponsor, you need a peg.” A peg, some PR gobbledygook that I didn’t understand. But Al was my teacher. He taught me how to get sponsored, and what that peg was-merely a gimmick- that you had to hitch on to. But he also taught me sponsorship can also be overdone. You can end up with more than you want or need, and then you find yourself stuck. I found this to be true when I returned to New York from Russia, with my Willys Jeep waiting in Spain for me to continue on to Southeast Asia.

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Chapter 4
WHO NEEDS MONEY ANYWAY?

Let’s face it. Mr. Sullivan-the editor at Life who told me to give it up-was right in one respect. If I wanted to write to make money, forget it. I should have studied biochemistry or rocket engineering instead. It would have been easier, and taken less time.

If it’s not for money, why does one want to write? When someone tells me they want to write and I ask them why they do, most likely they won’t have an answer. They will hem and haw around. What they really mean, and are unwilling to admit, is that what they want is to do something, a profession that will make them happy. Happy is the key word. We want to be happy in doing what we are doing. What pleases us the most? After all, what is our goal in life? For most of us, it is to be happy. Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia, states, “Happiness is an emotional or affective state that feels good or pleasing.” It goes on to say that the happy or ideal life is sometimes referred to as the American dream-or anyone’s dream, I say-which can be seen as the idea that most goals can be attained through sufficient hard work and determination, birth and privilege notwithstanding. While many artists, writers, scholars, and religious leaders can and do consider their work to fall within the dream, it is usually thought of as being measured by financial success. I like what Albert Schweitzer had to say on the subject. “Success is not the key to happiness,” he said. “If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”

If we really like what we are doing, and for me that is writing, then we can at least acquire a measure of happiness. Albert Schweitzer was right. If we base happiness on financial success, then, as writers, we are wrong. If we write because we like to write, then we may find happiness. If we write because we want to get rich or be famous, then unhappiness is likely to follow. I do not write for money. I get paid for my writing, but that is not my aim. I write because I like to write. I want to write. Friends, and even relatives, will criticize me for putting effort and time into a book that may never sell. Does it matter? I am doing what I want to do, not for the profit it will gain for me but for the desire to do it-like being able to swim the length of the pool underwater with one breath. As some people enjoy sitting in front of the TV watching soap operas and quiz shows, I like to sit in front of my computer (it used to be my Hermes) writing stories. I am not saying that I reject profits from the results of my writing when they come my way. And, unlike William Saroyan did, I would not turn down the Pulitzer Prize for believing writing should not be for profit. When money comes, well and good, but that is not altogether my motive. As it is, from my working hard at my trade, I have lived rather well from my writing-but there is no home in Malibu.

There is one dimension for the writer that reaches beyond wanting to be happy, and that is purpose. A writer will never fully be happy without a purpose. What is our purpose for wanting to write? We have a message we want to tell. We’ve heard it said that most people work a lifetime with one objective in mind-to retire. To sit back, relax and enjoy life. That’s not a writer’s aim, not a sincere writer. What did Ernest Hemingway say about writing? “As long as there is me, as long as there is pen and paper, that’s how long I will write.” Somerset Maugham was still scribbling out plot ideas when he was ninety-four.

James Clavell, the author of Tai Pan, set me straight on what is meant by purpose. I had the good fortune to meet the author through mutual friends, and we talked about the writing business. I recall his saying that book editors these days are interested in blockbusters-nothing else. He used the term “blockbuster” and gave it meaning-over-inflated productions that rely more on special effects than words and characters. The intent of a blockbuster is to distract the readers rather than engage him. Blockbusters marked the death of good writing. They are the product of market strategies. Their purpose is well defined.

Great editors like Maxwell Perkins who fostered Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others are no more. Today there a few dozen successful authors who write what the movies want; they are the ones who hold the monopoly on writing. They follow a prescribed format. We began to see the change coming in the late 1960s and 1970s when the blockbuster fiction writers began to take over with the sole purpose to entertain and make money while doing it. Their glossy-covered books began to appear everywhere, with a name like Robert Ludlum, Sidney Sheldon, Stephen King, Ken Follett, Harold Robbins, Danielle Steel and John Le Carre appearing in print bigger than the titles of their books. Their books dominate the bestseller list. Some will say that is what the public wants, so give them what they want. I don’t go along with that at all. More likely, it’s what the public is fed, fed by paid critics, fed by paid book reviewers and fed by the media on the take. I had one critic tell me you can take a mediocre book and, after dumping enough money into it for promotion, you can make it a best seller. Good writing, he concluded, is not necessary.

Clavell felt sorry for new writers, for many writers might have good stories to tell, but the chances of finding a publisher for them is almost impossible. What options do they have? One, they might consider publishing themselves.

Of course, just mention publishing your own book and you are bound to be criticized. It’s demoralizing to have someone say to you, “So no one will publish your book, you’ll have to publish it yourself.”

Hold on! We should not let that faze us.

First, there is no denying that there’s a stigma attached to publishing one’s own book. When writers do, they have to face criticism. But self-publishing is better than not publishing a book at all. So, I say, what if the public looks down on self-publishing, does it matter? If people find that self-publishing has such a stigma, then don’t bother reading George Bernard Shaw, Charlotte Bronte, Rudyard Kipling, Virginia Wolf, Walt Whitman, and Henry David Thoreau. Why? Because all of them first appeared in print through publishing their books themselves. Apparently Tom Sawyer sold so badly in its first printing that, to get it into print the second time, Mark Twain started his own publishing company.

Literature has, in fact, quite a tradition of legendary figures being rejected time and again by the mainstream before they gained acceptance. This includes James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man which was turned down by every publisher in England. Forty-seven publishers knocked back J.P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man. Did he give up? No! At one time, self-publishing was an honorable method of self-expression. But then something happened. By the early 20th century, as publishing firms grew, “vanity publishing” became a derogatory term, synonymous with a desperate writer. “It’s a wrong perception,” says Doug Ingold, managing Director of Wolfenden Publishers. “Self-publishing has always been a vital alternative outlet. It has its own important cultural function to perform. Today, with the frenzy of publishing house amalgamations, it is more important than before. With the advent of desktop technology, it is more accessible than ever.”

My objective is to write, to write what I want to write, and worry about having my work published when it is ompleted. I don’t need to worry about what I will feed my horse until I buy the horse.

People ask if I ever have writer’s block. Some call it the scourge of writing. I daresay, I have in late years l amed to overcome writer’s block. When writer’s block gins, I grab my notepad and go for a walk or take a drive.

I do much of my writing away from my desk. Sometimes I take my pocket tape recorder with me. People ask how I can produce so much. The reason is I write constantly . When I am on the road or soaring across the skies, I jot own notes about how I feel at the time, the sounds and smells, the other people I see. Since I write a lot of adventure stuff, I actually jot down notes when the action is happening, and that can be during a storm at sea or at a rest stop on a jungle trip. If l go mountain climbing, I take tape recorder. The grunts and groans, and the panting from being out of breath help by reminding me later of the agony I went through. I transcribe these notes when writer’s block approaches.

Other than cash rewards, writing does have perks all own. “I cannot help thinking just how good a life I have as a writer,” writer Robert Davis wrote in an e-mail to me while sitting in a beach resort on Koh Samui on the east coast of Thailand overlooking the Gulf of Siam. He was on a magazine assignment. “I still can’t believe the perks that we enjoy as travel writers-from flying business-class to being treated as a VIP at many five-star hotels around the world.” Robert enjoys the thrills from the benefits of writing as much as seeing his name on by-lines. You might say he’s a happy man. His problem is sometimes he’s too happy and forgets to write. That’s the time when he grumbles.

Those benefits Robert mentioned are the perks of travel writing. But there is also a downside. If you get a “freebie,” you must follow through with the assignment. Sometimes sponsors become impatient when they don’t see immediate results. It becomes my duty to keep sponsors informed. Sponsors have to be reminded that most magazines need at least a two-month lead time, and many editors may plan a year in advance. It is not unusual for me to have as many as ten to fifteen travel articles and features out with different magazines at the same time. I make a point not to annoy editors with questions, querying them over and over as to when their feature will run. Submit it and forget it-that’s the rule I follow. It’s important for me to keep records, where each story is and when it was submitted. For years I kept records in a bound notebook but now with computers I file them on CD.

Generally speaking, writers might not be well paid, and by some standards, it’s pathetically low, but how do you evaluate free hotel accommodation, free air tickets, free dinners and free-guided tours that come with the business? You can’t.

How many times have I heard people say they envy my job? They would like to do the same, but would they be willing to suffer through lean times when the checks are slow in coming? Writers are usually the last in line to be paid. First come editors sitting at the top, followed by sub-editors, proofreaders, clerks, receptionists, sweepers, and, most definitely, the printer. The printer is pretty high up the scale. Only then, at the very bottom is the writer. Getting that check can be most difficult. Payment varies from publication to publication. Some publishers, but very, very few, pay when the material is received and approved. Others pay upon publication, and then it might be at the end of the month or their so-called pay period. Still with others, it’s a flat thirty days, and even ninety days after publication. Of course, you have to send in a voucher, and more than one. Vouchers have the habit of getting lost. Sometimes the vouchers I had to submit and re-submit totaled in paper volume more than the story itself. It’s criminal. It’s no small wonder that The Writers Guild of America went on strike in the fall of 2007 for more benefits for their writers. It’s a pity freelance writers don’t have a union.

When I began making a living at travel writing, I enjoyed the freebies that came my way-airline tickets, hotel rooms, meals, rental cars. However, in time I learned that nothing is free. I became careful with what I accepted. But I also found, on occasion, to be grateful for a freebie. I can think of a free room I got at the Oriental as an example. The Oriental Hotel, as we know, is reputed to be the best hotel in the world, having been voted the best for ten consecutive years. It’s a splendid hotel, and you know it the moment you step through the front door. Ever since Joseph Conrad appeared on the scene, although as a seaman and not an honored guest, writers have always had a special affinity to The Oriental. Many of their names still live on in the hotel, tacked to the wall in the Author’s Lounge, and include Somerset Maugham, Noel Coward, James Michener, Alec Waugh, John Steinbeck Ernest Hemingway, Gore Vidal, Han Suyin, Peter U tinov, Barbara Cartland and many more.

Back to my story. The hotel was having a Food Summit Conference and as a writer for the Bangkok Post at the time I was invited. Being a busy weekend with heavy traffic-that was before the Skytrain-Mr. Kurt Wachtvietl, the general manager, offered me a room at the hotel, which I gladly accepted. The next day when I was leaving, I thanked him and said that one day I might be wealthy enough to pay for my stay at the hotel. “Nonsense,” he said, “most anyone who has money to spend can stay at the hotel, but not everyone can get a free room.” Not everyone gets a free room! How could I not be happy being a writer? I might also add, the hotel has placed my book At Home in Asia in a sealed time vault to be opened when the hotel celebrates its 200th birthday-some seventy years from now.

I had a heated discussion with my own son Paul about being a travel writer. It was all about money-he had applied to enter Berkeley. “That’s setting your goals pretty high,” I said. “It’s a good idea, but I don’t want you to be disappointed. Berkeley is tough to get into.” And then I made a rash statement that I could have regretted. I told him, mostly joking, that ifhe were accepted, I would take him on a trip around the world. I was sure he wouldn’t make it. He did make it and was accepted, so I had to keep my end of the bargain. But imagine the cost for two for a trip around the world. I needed two airline tickets to begin with. I approached the general manager of Scandinavian Airline System in Bangkok. I convinced him what the airline needed was a good history book of the airline’s involvement in Southeast Asia. It was not a bad idea since SAS is one of the oldest airlines to operate in that part of the world. The manager liked the idea, but he was under a tight budget. I explained that writing such a history was a major endeavor and required a great deal of research and endless interviews-but I would write it for airline tickets. I asked for three tickets around the world. Since we were at the bargaining table, I pitched high, leaving room to negotiate-three tickets, one for me, one for my son, and one for my wife. I didn’t have to bargain. The manager agreed.

We made the trip-Bangkok, Singapore, Bali, across India, to Scandinavia, Paris, New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, St. Louis, Albuquerque, San Francisco, and back home. Hotels gave us free accommodation; AVIS provided a car to drive around Europe and another one to drive across America. We climbed to the top of the Eiffel Tower, stood in front of the Capitol in Washington, visited the Indian reservations in New Mexico, hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and drove over the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

At the conclusion of the trip, the sponsors were happy, and I made sure they had stories in newspapers and magazines. But there was a rub. I asked my son, after he graduated from Berkeley, what he would want to do. He was very frank. “Dad, I hope you don’t mind, but I would like a job where the checks are on time. Writing and photography, you have to wait to get paid and then you never know.”

“Fair enough,” I said, “but what do you want out of life?”

“Dad, I want a good job, and I want to travel. I want to see more of the world.”

I didn’t want to discourage him, and I certainly hoped, like all fathers do, that he would land a good job after graduation, with good pay. But what did concern me was how he would ever be able to squeeze all that travel he wanted to do into two-week vacations every year.

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Trivial and Insignificant, But  Important Details

Time was when the toughest part of writing was staring a blank sheet of paper in the typewriter. It’s not much different looking at a blank screen on the computer. James Allen, the English philosopher, in one of his books, devoted the entire first chapter to “beginnings.” He wrote, “Most beginnings are small, and appear trivial and insignificant, but in reality they are the most important things in life.” We could have the greatest idea and the greatest plot in the world, but unless we make a strong beginning, the idea and the plot have no meaning, and there will be no fruitage. Whereas a modest idea and even an incomplete plot often produce success when companied by even an “insignificant” beginning. Even the smallest of actions, the ones James Allen called trivial and insignificant, can lead to great success. Consider Sir Isaac Newton’s principle that a “body at rest tends to main at rest and a body in motion tends to remain in motion.” This definitely applies to the action principle in writing. Once I’ve taken the first step (even a baby step), the next step seems easier to take. When I begin writing a book, I like to compare it with my building a seventy-foot schooner, a task everyone told me was impossible. When I was working on the transom, I would never walk around to the bow of the ship, for I would certainly become disillusioned. There was so much more to do, and it might make me feel I could never complete the job. But I did complete it, even though it took me years. The same applies to writing a book, or a short story, or anything. I get started, and the rest falls into place, in time.

I have to admit, the unfortunate thing about my being a writer is that I can never turn off. There is no five o’clock quitting time. I am forever working out plots in my mind.

I did very badly in college, and I think I now know the reason. When the professor was lecturing, I was turning his words into a plot, and I would soon be lost in my own reverie. But now I question, how important is a plot?

Dictionaries tell us a plot is basically a storyline, the arrangements of events in a story. It’s what happens in the story. I find I can make a story most interesting when I introduce a subplot, and it becomes even better when I have a couple of subplots. My duty as a writer is to make the story as believable as possible, regardless of how implausible it may seem in real life. Plots can take on a wide range of subjects: tragedy, comedy, romance, satire, poem, short stories and novel. Quoting from Clifton Fadiman, author, critic and member of the Board of Editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica, plots can be plot-driven or else character-driven. In the former, the storyline itself is the main thrust, which is the opposite of the latter, the character-driven plot. I try to make my characters the focal point.

The question that arises is do histories and biographies need plots? Writers of history record real-life events. His• tory books, we conclude, do not need plots. I believe that is what makes history dull, the lack of a plot. However, if we inject a plot into history books, we can make them interesting. Instead of facts becoming isolated events, we must attempt to give them objective connections. Authors must give their history books a theme.

I attempt to do the same when I write a biography. It’s often said biographies do not need plots. I disagree. For the past ten years, I have been putting together the notes for the biography, Painted in the Tropics. It’s the story of Swiss artist, Theo Meier. Theo followed in the footsteps of Paul Gauguin and went to Tahiti to paint. Disillusioned with Tahiti (the girls were reluctant to take their clothes off), he went to Bali where he lived and painted for twenty-two years before finally settling in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. His life is a string of events, all certainly exciting and dramatic, but in the end, my biography was lacking a plot, something to hold the events together. It dawned on me one day that Theo is the last of his kind. In this day and age, no one can do what he has done, nor achieve what he has achieved. With this in mind, I created a plot. All the events in the storyline must lead to that conclusion, there can be no other artist like Theo Meier.

As a young boy, I became fascinated with Robinson Crusoe. Here was a story about a person who was pure fiction. Clifton Fadiman, whom I mentioned previously, stated that Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe is one of the most famous books in the world. Yet, he declares, Robinson Crusoe has no plot. Why does it not need a plot? Because Defoe wrote it as a daydream, a perfect daydream, “systematic and wishful thinking” Fadiman called it. When you examine the storyline, you have to agree with him. Robinson Crusoe satisfies all those dreams of boyhood; but in reality, they affect men, as well. Look at the concept: every male dreams of being completely self-sufficient, with control of his own private domain. He likes the idea of success through the wholesome primitive use of muscle and practical good sense. And, from Fadiman, “doing all this in an exotic setting quite remote from his dull daily habitat; and finally of living in a self-made Utopia without any of the puzzling responsibilities of a wife and children.”

That, however, does not mean plots are not necessary. What would our world be if we couldn’t dream up plots?

Travel writing was my way to get started. It became my forte but I did not let it become an end in itself, only the beginning. I learned to parlay travel writing by using it as a stepping stone to other writing that I wanted to do-essays, histories, short stories, books. But the lessons I learned along the way didn’t come easy.

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Scattered But Complete Contents

Keeping a journal and writing in it eve1y day had, for me, another advantage. It taught me the habit of discipline. I made it a daily practice. I jotted down my thoughts and my feelings no matter how mundane they seemed at the time. If I didn’t have my notebook with me, I wrote on a scrap of paper, on a napkin, even a match box cover. I watched James Michener do this in Spain. He wrote notes on envelopes that he kept in his inside suit coat pocket. He wrote in a fine, minuscule writing so he could get more on a page. I often wondered if he turned the envelopes over to a secretary to transcribe. He must have, considering the volumes that he wrote.

My writing every day became a habit, which is what writing is all about. It’s a profession, and I’ve learned to treat it as such. I never let myself get bogged down in rules. Christina Jones, the popular British author of women’s contemporary fiction, comes to mind. She said in an interview, “Don’t worry about breaking the rules. Write because you love it. Write what you like reading-write for yourself as well as for your public. If you love your characters and your story, then it’ll show, and your readers will love them, too.”

I have a few principles that I follow. I like big, fancy• sounding words; they fascinate me. I collect them in a notebook and often read them over. But I do not use them, or seldom do. I may stick a big word into my text perhaps because of the way it sounds, impressive, but in the end, I cut it out. My whole idea of writing is to be understood. Why then would I use words the majority of the people don’t understand? By using such words, I am only defeating my purpose. I certainly don’t want to use big words to make myself sound erudite, as many authors do. Sometimes it’s unavoidable. It may be certain big words are the only words that describe my thoughts to the fullest. I like what William Faulkner had to say about Ernest Hemingway: “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”

I will emphasize the point I made earlier. When a writer says, “You don’t understand what I am saying,” then the writer has got it wrong. A writer’s duty is to make his writing understandable. To say such a thing, the reader doesn’t understand, is to admit ignorance. Also if a writer makes statements like “it’s beyond description” then he should find another profession. Nothing should be beyond description. Another no-no is “words cannot explain it.” I suggest to these people to take up painting and not writing. By the same token, I make every attempt to omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. Example: “He walked into the bar and the bartender put the lid back on the free lunch” bowl.” That says it all with not a single adjective or a long description. You know immediately guy who entered the bar is a bum. I endeavor to write in a way which comes naturally, and I do this with nouns and verbs, not adjectives. Paint! Draw! I draw the picture for others to see it in their minds. Above all, I avoid fancy words or hackneyed phrases: cold as ice, hot as hell, or as did above-“by the same token.” The duty of a writer is to create new expressions.

Take a look at Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. There are not many words in the books that an eighth grader wouldn’t understand. Much of our modern literature comes from these books. A writer’s aim should be to put down on paper what he actually sees and what he actually feels, and to do this in the best and simplest way he can. This is what Mark Twain did in Tom Sawyer. He put readers there in a small town on the Mississippi River, whitewashing fences.

To get started writing each day, I have to get myself into the mood, and to do this I read a little beforehand. Maybe only a page or two, but it must be good writing, something that I find thought inspiring-not trash. I treat writing the same. I pick up a good book, a classic, and begin reading. It’s kick-starting me into action. But I make sure it’s good writing and not rubbish. When I go to a gym, I do warm-up exercises first. Writing for me is the same. If I lay off writing for a few weeks, or even a few days, I find myself out of shape, and I must go through some warm-up exercises first. Reading is that exercise.

But what constitutes good writing? The classics, perhaps? According to Carl Van Doren, critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, “A classic is a book that doesn’t have to be rewritten.” In other words, it’s a book that can stand the ravages of time.

When I was a beginner with hope of becoming published, it took courage to sit down and write. My fear was not the act of writing but the fear that someone would laugh at me. It helped when I read what Eddie Rickenbacker had to say about fear. When he was asked if he was frightened when he flew the Atlantic, he said: “Courage is doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you are scared.”

When I ponder a new story idea, I have worked out a good testing ground to see if I am on the right track. I talk it over with friends-but I do it surreptitiously. I can gauge a story’s weight by reaction from others. This works well when I give a public talk. I can feel out the audience and determine their likes and dislikes. Friends at a dinner table can do this for me, too. My listeners become my teachers, unknown to them.

If I find it difficult developing a new story, I sit down and proceed as if I am writing a letter to a friend or a letter home. No fancy words and no questionable prose. I keep it light, and I am not afraid to make fun of myself. I write to inform not to embellish.

Writing letters can be dangerous. What does it matter with a little fib in a letter? I can think of a specific case where simple letters written home turned out to be explosive. It happened in Vietnam. I was covering the war as a correspondent, and I got many leads by listening to Gls telling their experiences. I listened to one story a couple of Gls joked about regarding a corporal who sat behind a desk in Saigon. Everyone back home felt sorry for him for risking his life at war. So as not to disappoint them, he wrote war stories in his letters home. But the tales he told were not what happened to him but what had happened to others. When he did return home, he returned as a war hero. His mother had been handing his letters over to the local newspaper, and they published them. The town even named a street after him. I wonder what he feels every time he looks into a mirror. I make sure I don’t put myself to the same situation.

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WRITER’S FATIGUE

We are all subject to writer’s fatigue. In the beginning, I used to get stuck on a writing project in which, after time, I lost interest. That’s when writing becomes boring. My solution is to write a number of things at the same time. When one gets boring, I switch to another. I am usually writing two or three books at once. I keep adding thoughts to each one. It’s surprising how rapidly the pages can fill up. The same is true for magazine articles. I always have half a dozen in the mill at one time. When I go back and re-read the material, I can readily see my mistakes or what needs to be changed and re-written.

It was difficult, but I had to learn not be afraid to scrap material no matter how many hours, days or months that I spent on it. Novice writers usually think what they write is great. Consider what Miguel de Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote, had to say about it. “No fathers or mothers think their own children are ugly; and this self-deceit is yet stronger with respect to the offspring of the mind.” Rarely does a fledgling writer think that his or her writing is bad. Criticize the work of a novice, and the first thing he will say to you is, “But you don’t understand; let me explain.” If I have to explain in spoken words what my writing means, then I am not coming across. I attempt to write so the written word is understood and does not need an oral explanation.

Sometimes, distasteful as it may be, it’s mandatory that I start all over from the beginning, for no amount of rewriting will do. It happens to the best of writers. Imagine what happened to Hemingway when he was struggling with his first novel. He was living in Paris and had been befriended by literary guru Gertrude Stein, as had so many other writers of his time-F. Scott Fitzgerald. Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson and many others. Hemingway had completed the draft of his first novel and gave it to Stein to comment on. She read it with care and told him it was good and then said for him to start over. He didn’t agree with her and probably would not have done so except for the misfortune that while on a train to Italy he lost his suitcase which contained the manuscript. It was a misfortune that turned into a fortune. He was compelled to start over. We may never have seen The Sun Also Rises had he tried to salvage the old script. In fact, he might not have written another thing had it failed, although somehow I doubt it.

I got into the early habit of writing every day, even if it was only jotting down notes. I did this by keeping a journal. How often that journal came in handy. How well I remember the time I lived in Tahiti, struggling to become a writer, and no one was buying my stories. But I didn’t stop writing. I spent much time writing in my journal. The journal was detailed, and what I wrote was confidential, not intended for publication. It contained information on people I had met and included our conversations-some• times word for word. It was raw and honest. I considered the journal as a kind of training exercise. I wrote in it each day about all the people I had met, what I had seen and experienced and what I had felt. I treated my journal as an artist would treat a sketchpad.

A few years later, still in my lean years, I took a summer job teaching in a school in Washington, D.C. One of my students was the secretary for the travel editor of the Washington Post. She mentioned that they were doing a write up on New Zealand, but at the last minute, the writer assigned to the project hadn’t produced. I said that I had taken notes on New Zealand and could write a story. I did the story, gave it to her, and it was printed the following Sunday in the travel section. How thrilled l was to be published in the Washington Post. The following week, the Post was covering Central America and was short on material. l wrote a piece “Through the Paper Curtain to Panama.” I had taken notes on the trip when I came up from Panama to New York. The story was published and others followed-“Harry’s New York Bar in Paris,” “Across the Australian Outback,” “Cheap Dining in Tokyo” and a raft of others, a story every week. The editor became suspicious and wanted to know where I was get• ting all my material. According to his secretary, who was our go-between, the editor had a strong suspicion that I might be plagiarizing the material. But from where was I getting it? He couldn’t figure it out, and it was driving him crazy. I explained to his secretary that my material came from a journal I kept. The editor became convinced my journal was fictitious, that it didn’t exist. One Friday evening, I had a surprise when he came to the school, walked right up to my desk and asked to see my journal. Of course, I had to tum it over to him. If l refused, as they say in Asia, I’d lose face. He not only wanted to look at it, but he asked if he could take it home with him over the weekend. He agreed to return it the following Monday.

I felt terrible all weekend. A total stranger was reading my most intimate writing. I phoned him the first thing Monday morning. He wasn’t in. I phoned Tuesday, he was in New York. On Thursday, he phoned me. He had news for me. I couldn’t believe it, but he had taken my journal, all 400,000 words, to Random House in New York, and the editors were interested in publishing it. Would I go to New York? Would I! I was on the next train. It was my big break, the kind you always hear about: “local writer makes good.” Random House would publish my book, and they offered a hefty advance. I was at the top of the world. The chief editor explained his staff would work closely with me. Would I agree? How could I tum down such an offer? I agreed. “I’ll need time to go over the manuscript,” I said. “You know-name changes, cut some of the stuff out.”

There was silence. Finally the editor spoke up. He wanted the manuscript exactly as it was, with no changes.

That was not possible. What I had written was confidential. I had written about people I got to know, like Marlon Brando. I wrote about a Tahitian girl on the movie set of Mutiny on the Bounty whom Brando had gotten pregnant. I told how the girl quit the movie and had run off with an Australian surfer. I couldn’t destroy the girl and the Australian guy she had married. There were others that I had come to know and wrote about in my journal-Gardner McKay from the TV series “Adventures in Paradise,” actors James Mason and Richard Harris and writers who I won’t name. I had to tum down the offer. That was a tough decision. I was doomed before I started. I feel I can talk about it now as all the people mentioned above have passed away.

I started keeping a journal when I was a young Marine in China. It was dreadful, filled with clichés, misspellings, and the grammar was deplorable. I put it away and forgot about it until a few years ago. Like most other Marines who had fought in the Pacific, I wanted to forget the war. We had new lives to begin, and the past was the past. Not until the Japanese began turning history around did I decide to write my version of the war. The result was Take China, The Last of the China Marines. Among the comments I received after its publication was how could I possibly remember everything I wrote in the book? I must have a good memory. No, I had a good journal that I kept, as badly written as it was. What really hurt was not “what” I put down but “how” I put it down. In China, I was studying Chinese and kept some of my journal in Chinese, phonetic Chinese, and these were usually the juicy bits that I didn’t want others to read. Today, I can’t read these sections and I wonder what it was that I actually wrote. As they say, “It’s all Greek to me.” Also with Take China, although it is mostly fact, I called it fiction. did it to save face for the families of the Marines who may read the book. While gathering information, I corresponded with many of the Marines who fought in the Pacific and served as China Marines. When they learned was publishing a book, they became concerned. They didn’t want their children and grandchildren to know they were killers and frequent visitors to brothels in China. I changed their names, and thus, they can say to their off- spring – ‘What an imagination that Stephens has.” It’s interesting to note, however, after the publication of Take China some Marines recognized themselves and asked why I changed their names. You can’t win all the time.

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Right Contents

What is important is to get my facts straight. If I print false or incorrect information, I will find myself at loggerheads with both my publishers and my readers. Passing on inaccurate or false information creates a disservice. Unfortunately, history is replete with such falsehoods. Checking facts is time consuming. I had to take such precautions when I was making the motor trip around the world that I mentioned. I was told I could not drive through Burma. What this meant was upon my arrival in East Pakistan, which is Bangladesh today, I would have to ship the vehicles and equipment by freighter around Burma to Thailand. That’s what I was told. But what if the information I had was not factual? What if there was a road that was open across Burma? What a terrible mistake it would be if I by-passed Burma only to discover later the route was not closed or, worse, that someone else had successfully driven across the country? That wouldn’t do. I simply couldn’t take for granted the road through Burma was closed. I had to drive to the Burma/East Pakistan border to discover for myself whether it was closed or not. It was closed. It had been closed just after the war. The same was true when I arrived at the Thailand border. I had to drive through northern Thailand to the Burma/Thailand border at Chiang Rai to find if the road was blocked. It, too, was closed to international travel. It was troublesome, but I knew for certain the road across Burma was closed, and there was no denying it.

For the writer, misadventures can make good copy. Consider Joseph Conrad. He was in Singapore, an out-of-work seaman looking for work aboard a ship, when he heard the sad tale about the officers of a passenger ship who had abandoned the vessel when the thought the ship was sinking. The ship was carrying Muslim pilgrims to Mecca. But the ship didn’t sink. From this information, Conrad, when he gave up the sea and took up a pen, wrote Lord Jim, the novel that became a classic in English literature.

I can understand when I hear writers say they have a hard time getting started, but what really baffles me is when I hear people who want to write say-“I wish I could write.” To me, it’s like listening to someone say, “I wish I could swim,” or, “I wish I could play golf.” Stop wishing and learn how to swim or learn how to play golf. Stop wishing and do it. The same goes for writing. Just do it. There is no easy road; it doesn’t come naturally. There’s no such a thing as writing being a gift. A person is a gifted writer not because someone gave the talent to him but because he developed it himself. It’s a craft we have to learn, like bricklaying or doctoring.

When one becomes successful at anything, there’s a great temptation to think, “Hey, that wasn’t so difficult,” or “I wonder why more folks don’t do this,” or “All it takes is some hard work and dedication and anyone can do it” or any number of similar scenarios. Because we don’t really know bow our brains get to be “wired” like they are, we’re tempted to ascribe our accomplishments to our “smart” decisions and/or our tireless dedication, or whatever, rather than to what some might call the whims of Lady Luck.

Luck! I can’t believe it when a person says he is lucky, or isn’t lucky. When I told a friend about my encounter with Mr. Sullivan, the editor at Life, he remarked how lucky I was for had I departed a few seconds earlier or had I not memorized Mr. Sullivan’s address correctly, who knows what the subsequent scenario may have led to. That was not luck. It was circumstance. Had I not seen Mr. Sullivan, and had he not discouraged me, I would have looked for another avenue of action to follow. The incident with Mr. Sullivan gave me the tenacity to strive even harder to become the writer I wanted to be. I wasn’t about to give up. What comes to mind is the quote by Ernest K. Gann: “Even the most carefully contrived plan can be outraged by just a trivial event.” In the real world, only a few get to see their “carefully contrived plan” carried to fruition; many more get to see theirs “outraged,” and the vast majority never even get so far as a “carefully contrived plan.” To even get to the point of carefully contriving a plan, several talents are required and then several more are needed to put a plan into action. Really “successful” people are the ones who have, somehow, been able to call on the required talents and then have had the right circumstances smile on their efforts. Then, there are the untold numbers of ones who had the required talents to put together plans, many that would have been superior to those of the “successful” folks, but inexplicably their circumstances, not Lady Luck, changed. The only time luck comes into play is at the dice table.

Luck should not be confused with Cause and Effect. The Law of Cause and Effect says that everything happens for a reason. For every effect in our life, there is a cause, or series of specific, measurable, definable, identifiable causes.

This law says that if there is anything we want in life, an effect that we desire, we can find someone else that has achieved the same result or effect, and that by doing the same things that they have done over and over we can eventually enjoy the same results and rewards. This is why we look for mentor, or role models if you wish, that we can look up to. Good literature and great writers did this for me.

It took me a long time to discover that success is not an accident. It is not the case of good luck versus bad luck. There are a series of specific steps we take that bring us to where we are. We are where we are, and what we are because of ourselves. It has been our choices and our decisions over the span of time that has inevitably determined the condition of our life at this moment.

If we read the recorded writings of the earliest great thinkers of all time, the philosophers and the metaphysicians we find they have all emphasized the power of the human mind to shape individual destinies.

The key to my learning to write, and it was not luck, was for me to engage in more of the actions that were more likely to bring about the consequences that I desired. And that was to travel, to break away from the humdrum, the nine-to-five so to speak. I had to conscientiously avoid those actions that did not bring about the consequences that I desired. I looked for the positive and not the negative. I listened not to critics.

Writing, of course, is much easier when one’s heart is really in it. I love to write, and that is a step forward. But it’s only a step, one step. I hear it often from those who want to write-“It’s easy for you. You are a writer.” What they mean, or believe, is that once a writer becomes established, it’s no longer a struggle. That is not so. Most folks don’t realize the discipline it takes to sit down and write. You need space to write; it’s not only important, it’s vital. A painter can set up his easel on a busy street comer and paint. A writer needs to concentrate, and that usually requires being alone. You can imagine how hard it can be to write in places like Tahiti that I mentioned earlier. That requires real discipline. I don’t know how Nordoff and Hall managed to complete The Bounty Trilogy with all the temptations they faced.

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GETTING STARTED

It was a tough road I went down to become a writer but I was no exception. Most writers have to go down that same road. When someone tells me they are interested in writing, and I tell them what a tough grind it is, they don’t like to hear it. They only want to hear the positive. But fact is fact. The apprenticeship is long and hard. I have always contended that by the time I learned to write-by that I mean the hours I spent mastering the trade-I could have spent the same amount of time studying law or medicine and became a lawyer or a doctor. I acknowledge, of course, that a person could become a successful writer but might make a lousy lawyer or doctor-or vice versa. But the sobering fact is that that road doesn’t end. To continue to write successfully, the learning process must not end. It must go on without end. This is especially true for travel writing.

To write about travel, naturally, I had to travel. But it was much more than arriving at a destination and writing superficial descriptions about the place. I found, if I wanted to write well, I had to study the place beforehand and do my research. For each new destination I visited, I had to learn the history of the place, its culture, its folklore and anything else that might be interesting for my readers, and that only comes from study. Travel came second to study. Had I been writing occasional travel piece for magazines and newspapers that might have been different. But when a newspaper assigned me with a weekly travel column, the picture changed. Every week I had to discover something new, something exciting that would interest my readers, and that meant traveling non-stop.

Travel writing for me was a start. It leads to magazine writing and then to books. Study, however, didn’t stop. In fact, it increased and took on a new momentum.

I went to Tahiti hoping to write about the South Pacific. To write knowledgeably about the Pacific I had to become an authority on the Pacific, which meant more reading and endless research. I read Pacific island histories, the journals of Captain James Cook, books by circumnavigators, The Bounty Trilogy by Nordoff and Hall, scientific studies and scores of biographies. The Bishop Museum in Honolulu became my second home. For some assignments, like Easter Island, it required a great deal of in-depth research, a difficult task since little was known about the history of the island. It was the same everywhere I traveled: Russia, China, Australia, and all Southeast Asia. I was doing far more reading than I ever did in college. And to think when I graduated, I thought my studies were over. They were only beginning.

Research can be exciting and it’s surprising what we can tum up. I discovered the works of obscure and forgotten writers of the South Pacific that dated back a century ago. Their stories made not only good reading but they also provided me with excellent reference material. Sources for books and references came from old book• stores and private libraries in people’s homes. In Tahiti I befriended Lula Hall, writer James Hall’s widow, and she opened up her private library to me. What a discovery this was. Here were some of the original sources that Hall used for his Bounty Trilogy. I had a tough time tearing myself away from her library.

The basement of the National Museum in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, became my Bishop Museum away from home. In dusty volumes on back shelves I delved into unpublished manuscripts that became genuine treasure troves. For example, we hear so much today about the Chinese Admiral Zheng He who sailed with an armada of hundreds of ships and explored far beyond the borders of China. One writer has even claimed Zheng He discovered America long before Columbus reached the New World.

I read about him in the basement of the National Museum in Kuala Lumpur and wrote several magazine articles about his seven voyages. No one knew him then but an interest in him soon developed. From another book on a back shelf I read that an English rubber planter had built a European castle in the jungle and abandoned it when the First World War began. It took me weeks to find the castle, completely overgrown by the forest. It was good story material and I wrote about it. Today Kellie’s Castle is in tourist brochures. Making discoveries like these is when research becomes interesting and enjoyable and reaps untold rewards.

My book, The Strange Disappearance of Jim Thompson, took years of research, and although the book has long been published, the story of Jim Thompson is not over. New information, new leads about him continue to filter in. It may end up that I need to write an entirely new book. But then the strange disappearance of Jim Thompson may end up being not so strange.

The saying is the written story ends when it is published. It cannot be changed. I find this is not true. A published work only opens doors.

When I set the record for the longest motor trip around the world in a Toyota Land Cruiser and wrote Who Needs a Road, I thought that was the end. But one never knows how a book will turn out. Letters keep coming from readers asking about the expedition and making comments. The book has endured time for the simple reason that, the world being what it is, such a motor trip around the world cannot be made today. It was unfortunate that when Bobbs-Merrill, the New York publishers, decided to publish the book, they never expected it to be a hit and printed but a few thousand copies. A magazine editor, Al Podell, who made the trip with me, thought differently. He scheduled me to appear on the “Tonight Show” and “To Tell the Truth” and a couple other TV shows. I made my appearances but Bobbs-Merrill couldn’t print copies fast enough to meet the demand. It was disappointing. I went on a book-signing tour around the U.S. but there were no books in the shops. I chalk it up to experience.

One advantage of being published is that I receive some very interesting letters from readers who inform me about lost cities, sunken treasures, unexplored caves, forgotten jungle tribes and just about everything imaginable. I amassed so much information, I found I had enough material to write a book, which I did, and called it Return to Adventure, Southeast Asia.

What I have learned to be careful about are those people who approach me and say they have confidential information they want to share with me. “I’ 11 tell you what,” they begin, and it’s always the same, “you are a writer. I can’t write, but I have a great story that will make an excellent book.” I try to break away from them but sometimes I can’t. They continue, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll tell it to you, you write it down, and we’ll split it down the middle.” They usually add that we will make a fortune.

I found it disheartening once when I turned a deaf ear on a scuba diver who claimed to have found a sunken Japanese submarine. He was so persistent I practically had to tell him to get lost. About a year later, the story broke. The man did know the location of a sunken Japanese submarine.

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Perfect, But with More Distractions

Another place where I was convinced that I would be able to write was aboard my schooner, Third Sea. That’s what I thought when I built the vessel in Singapore and sailed her with my five-man crew to Bangkok to be fitted out. I had everything I wanted-my own private cabin and a big saloon. Just imagine, if I didn’t like my neighbors, I could move. In waters around Southeast Asia, there are endless coves ideal for anchoring. I found coves every• where. One cove in particular that I liked was on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula. We dropped anchor, and I set up my Hermes (I had bought a new one after selling my old one in Tahiti) in the main saloon and sat down to work. But then, as it often happened in that cove, and in others as well, I’d hear a shout from above -“What’s that, look, over there!” It was one of the crew. Of course, I had to rush up on deck to see what it was all about. There might be a school of porpoises that had come into the cove and begun frolicking around the schooner. They are always a grand spectacle, fun to watch as they leap so effortlessly. Or, if it wasn’t porpoises, maybe it was a manta ray gliding along the surface. They are wonderful to watch, too. The water in those coves was so clean and crystal clear that we could look down and see the anchor resting on the bottom thirty feet below. We were also likely to see schools of fish swimming by. Now that I was up on deck, I reasoned I might as well put on fins, grab a snorkel and take a short swim. The swim would last for hours. So much for writing that day.

Then, there was the problem of the crew. It’s most difficult to tell the crew that there are chores to be done while I sit in the saloon at my typewriter. “I have some writing to catch up on, too,” they would invariably say and plop themselves down with letters to write or a journal to bring up to date. To keep a crew working, I had to set the example and work with them, or else I’d have to find a place on shore where I could escape to write.

I learned I could do very little writing aboard my schooner. For me, boats are not the ideal place to write, believe me. I found this to be true once again when I crossed the South Pacific aboard a Messageries Maritimes freighter.

I spent hours reclining in a deck chair staring out at the blue Pacific. Other than keeping a journal, I didn’t write a single word on any of those voyages but I did a lot of dreaming.

Is there such thing as the most ideal place to write?

In the end I chose Bangkok. Why Bangkok?

Chance brought me here. I was making a motor trip around the world and got caught in a war between India and East Pakistan, or Bangladesh as it is called today. The U.S. Air Force airlifted me, along with the staff of the US Embassy in Dacca to Bangkok in Thailand. A reporter at the Bangkok Post interviewed me about my motor trip and the evacuation, and through him I met his editor. When the editor learned that I didn’t know how long I had to wait for the India-East Pakistan war to end, he asked if I would like to write a few travel stories for the paper while I was detained. I accepted. Bangkok turned out to be an excellent hub for writing. It is within easy reach of tropical jungles, unexplored seabeds and exciting cities with skylines of domes of mosques, Buddhist temples, Hindu shrines and Christian churches. I wanted to write, and here was material to write about. Bangkok suited me fine. The India-East Pakistan war ended, I completed my motor trip around the world and returned to Southeast Asia where there were endless stories to write .

When I began writing for the Bangkok Post, the editor offered me a desk surrounded by a hundred other desks where journalists sat. Fortunately, as a travel writer, I had to spend more time traveling than sitting at a desk. In time, however, at the Post I learned how to close out the world around me. There could have been a shootout or a team of wild horses thundering through the office and I would not have noticed them. More important, from that experience, I found I could write anyplace. Most newspapermen can do it and so do most office workers. Hemingway wrote most in the morning sitting in La Closerie des Lilas in Paaris and drank in Cafe de Flore at night. That requires true dedication. However, I still contend the place to write is in a room without a view.

It all comes down to the premise if we want to write and we are sincere about it, we can write anywhere. For the moment I like Bangkok. Tomorrow, however, is another day.

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Unusual Distractions

But that damned monkey was something else.

Keith loved animals. He was run out of Bangkok for his love of animals. He had a brown bear he called Hash. He kept Hash on a leash and took him wherever he went, on buses, trains, and taxis. Taxis were more difficult, because drivers usually didn’t want to stop for Keith and his five-foot tall bear. Then, on one Fourth of July, there was a reception at the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok. All Americans in Bangkok are invited to the annual event. Keith attended and brought Hash. There were no fireworks, as they had been outlawed, but there was food and drink. Copious stacks of food displayed on long tables in the garden, all sorts of food as well as tidbits, sandwiches and cakes and fruit. When Hash, the tame bear, saw the display of food, he was no longer tame. No leash was strong enough to hold him back. He charged at the table like a locomotive out of control with Keith attempting to hold him back-unsuccessfully. Hash upset tables, spilling food everywhere. He caused untold havoc. He and Keith were escorted out the main gate by leery security guards. A letter from the ambassador with a bill for the damages prompted Keith to move.

In Singapore, he bought an old junk and outfitted it as a disco with loud music and flashing neon signs. As an added attraction, he turned the vessel into a menagerie. The place attracted yuppies in Singapore and in time became very popular. The bumboat operators loved it. Anchored out in the harbor, a fleet of bumboats ferried passengers to and fro. The Singapore authorities became concerned and, it seemed, were about to close the place down, but in the end there was no need to do so. The junk sank. Well, it didn’t just sink, but something even more drastic happened. To re-supply the junk, Keith would motor the junk to the dock and secure it while he took on supplies. Singapore has a tidal range of about three meters, and when the tide goes out, vessels sometimes rest on the mud bottom until the tide comes in again. Unfortunately, Keith moored above a spike sticking up in the mud, and when the tide went out, the spike came up through the hull. No one noticed what had happened until the tide came in, but the junk didn’t rise. It simply filled with water and remained on the bottom. The crew and animals aboard panicked. To save the animals, the crew released them, and soon, monkeys, a brown bear, a porcupine, a couple of wallabies and even a ten-foot long python were roaming the waterfront along Clifford Pier causing panic among the pedestrians.

Keith had to surrender his animals to an animal collector in Malaysia but managed to keep his gibbon without the authorities knowing it. He kept the gibbon in his apartment. The animal was there when I agreed to watch the place while Keith was on a month’s home leave. The gibbon was a nasty creature that didn’t like me, and I didn’t like him. He would bare his fangs when I came near, and I’d do the same to him. I had to put up with our mutual dislike. The apartment was free, I had no bills to pay and here I could write. When Keith was gone, I locked the animal in the bathroom and left the window open with a small crack for air.

I never gave thought that the gibbon could work the window open wide enough to scramble out. He did but he didn’t just take refuge on the ledge or escape to the roof No, he found the bathroom window open in the apartment next door and made his way inside. The apartment happened to be owned by an elderly Chinese dowager. She was away for a few weeks visiting her sister in Canton. The lady was a collector of antiques and, I later beard, had some priceless pieces in the apartment. Keith’ monkey became more than the bull in the China shop. He took delight in knocking vases and jars off their stands, and he screamed with joy when they shattered on the floor. I could hear the calamity, but there was nothing I could do but hope for the best, and also hope the lady didn’t suddenly come home. It took me the better part of a day for me to coax the hooting beast back into Keith’s bathroom with the help of a bunch of bananas. When I got him inside again, I locked the bathroom window. There was a big investigation when the lady returned, but it was put down to vandalism. The authorities concluded that most likely one of the dowager’s enemies sent hoodlums to destroy her collection. Envy, they called it. It wasn’t envy, of course. It was Keith’s gibbon, but I never told anyone, not even Keith, even after he said I should have kept the window open for fresh air for the poor gibbon.

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