How the Sauce Gets Made
Surviving in the travel writing desert. Plus, Whitney and Absolut!
Be the like the bush. That’s what I kept telling myself as I ventured into Israel’s Negev desert on a hot morning last May. Channel the small green shrubs dotting the sides of the road. Their existence, in the otherwise dry, desolate landscape, where variations on beige include buttercream, bisque, champagne, and linen, denotes survival. The Zugan, as it’s called in Hebrew, must figure out how to endure without water or with too much sun. It must even kill parts of itself to regenerate.
Hoping to avoid that last part, it’d still be my muse as I attempted to not get lost on a hike. The last time I headed out on foot in Israel, I got so turned around near the Golan Heights that I ended up scrambling to the side of the road and flagging down a car for assistance.
That was the original intro to my just-published WSJ piece about my hike in Israel’s Negev. Actually, it was my second “original” intro (now meaning clever) and the one I preferred. But it’s not the one you’ll read online or in print.
It’s rare that a piece gets so muddled from what it was meant to be that I don’t want to share it. Not that my copy is always so clean and publishable on the first go. But that’s what good editors are for. And while the story you’ll hopefully read (damn you, paywall!) is fine, it’s just not how I hoped it’d turn out. But if I’m really honest, it was the process on this one—from pitch to publication—that really wore me down.
Generally, the writer-editor relationship is collaborative—especially for print. There’s give and take. There’s revising and rewording. The editor is respectful of a writer’s time and efforts, and ends up making the piece stronger. They know their publication best, after all. Each has its own style and voice, which makes our job as freelancers who contribute to a variety of them even more challenging. Still, I like to think I know when to be precious (rarely) and when to let go (often). In return, I hope to be given a fair chance to do any of that—not four days to revise something I filed back in June, and over a holiday weekend to boot.
Point is, this experience felt like a fight to the death at the 11th hour. What got killed, in the end, was most of my voice, some of my creativity, and definitely a bit of my pride. Not to mention my hopes for continued survival in the often disorientating desert known as Travel Writing.
Be like the bush, Sara. Be like the bush.
I’m not going to extrapolate any further. It’s too inside baseball. Plus, I don’t think it’s the place, and it’s not my style. Furthermore, it’s almost Yom Kippur. Time for compassion and forgiveness! In fact, I almost wasn’t going to say anything at all. I’d reached my limit and was ready to move on. No one who reads the piece will be any wiser anyway. It’s all fiiiiine.
But then I thought: You know what? I worked hard on those words. I am happy with them and feel they make for evocative writing. They reflect me as a writer, and the destination I’m trying to describe and encourage others to visit. Plus, I just so happen to have my own newsletter that needs an intro…
So there you have it. A smidgen of how the sauce gets made (and sometimes gets hot and spicy) for us enviable travel writers. :)
I may no longer be in the desert, but it seems to channel that self-sustaining bush is, indeed, the route to take.
Bon week-end friends. And for those fasting, may it be a meaningful one. xx — Sara
Clickable
The aliveness of walking. | The NY Times
On being a hopeless romantic for all the lover-ly feelings. | Modern Love
Dissecting Tom Hanks’s four “pretty good” movies. | Vulture
Finding relief and joy in the search for a savior. | The NY Times
Pre-colonial cooking is now America’s best. | The New Yorker
Guess it’s time to go to Ghent! | WaPo
Dining out: “The once-geriatric stigma of being an early bird is gone.” | T Mag
All the fashionable folk in Paris love ice cream and natural wine. | Eater
Watchable
I’m so proud to have called This Woman, Atoosa Rubenstein, my boss. And now, I am also so proud to call her my friend. Her TedX talk is soul-tingling good and inspiring. These words, especially, spoke to me: “The pursuit of being special is toxic…Belonging is our birthright.”
For those who celebrate—or are fans of the musical “Oklahoma”!—this is a clever, Jew-y version of the title song with a Rosh Hashanah slant. I love that some performers are wearing cowboy hats, but kinda wished others weren’t still wearing masks. Womp, womp. Covid: Still a Thing!
Here’s the trailer for another bio-pic I didn’t know was happening. I’m on the fence about it because it’s WHITNEY. Can anybody compare? Even someone trying to PLAY her? I’ll see it, though. Even the teaser gave me chills and brought me back to my childhood days of dancing and singing in front of mirrors, in the shower—anywhere, essentially! Don’tcha wanna dance, say you wanna dance, don’tcha wanna dance!
It’s been a while since we had a laugh with Uncle Roger, and his take on Rachael Ray’s Pad Thai is worth nine minutes of your time. Between her use of soy sauce, inability to measure, and addition of edible flowers, it’s no wonder he schooled this “pro.”
On Repeat: “Devil Town” by Bright Eyes
I’m deep into rewatching Friday Night Lights, and while I’m finally on season two (remember when shows had, like, 20 episodes???) I can’t stop listening to the song “Devil Town” by Bright Eyes, which appeared in season 1 performed by Tony Lucca. Something about the lyrics “all my friends were vampires” just slays me!
Currently Overthinking…
…hiking routes in Ireland…clever ledes and kickers…email responses…how much to share…IF to share…
Souvenir: Absolut Ads
Raise your hand if you ripped these out of magazines and made a montage of them on your bedroom wall in the ’90s. I went to a cocktail event last weekend with tons of liquor sponsors—including Absolut—which reminded me of this clever campaign. While it’s no longer my vodka of choice (I prefer gin now anyway), you gotta give it to the Don Draper who came up with the concept.
Don’t forget: Sponsoring a souvenir is a perk of being a paid subscriber.