{"id":15070,"date":"2016-06-27T07:35:19","date_gmt":"2016-06-27T07:35:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/?p=15070"},"modified":"2021-01-19T13:47:42","modified_gmt":"2021-01-19T13:47:42","slug":"40-years-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/40-years-on\/","title":{"rendered":"40 years on…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"viewpoint\"THIS summer I\u2019m celebrating 40 years as an outdoor writer. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to mark the occasion by taking a rafting trip through the Grand Canyon with my two sons, followed by a five week campervan and mountain walking trip with my long suffering wife to the hills of France and Spain.<\/p>\n

Then, all going well, it\u2019ll be back on the training bike as I prepare for an autumn ride around the North of Scotland 500.<\/p>\n

In between I have to spend a few weeks working \u2013 I\u2019ll be filming my second series of Roads Less Travelled for BBC Scotland – this time a campervan journey between Dornoch<\/a> and Orkney<\/a>, with a good bit of walking, cycling and paddling thrown in for good measure.<\/p>\n

And when I get a chance to draw breath I\u2019ll be writing up columns for this fine website, for my monthly contribution to the Scots Magazine, and getting some walks and cycle routes completed for my little quarterly magazines Scottish Walks and Scottish Cycling.<\/p>\n

Despite my description of these activities as \u2018celebrations\u2019 in effect this summer will be little different to the past 39 summers and the greatest lesson I\u2019ve had to learn is that of time management \u2013 how to get a good balance between wandering the hills, either here or abroad, and the inexorable amount of time it takes to sit at a computer and write up the stories and features that someone will pay for.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the crunch. At the end of the day the climbing and the travel and all the activities are wonderful, but you have to turn those experiences into a product that you can sell to make a living, and that\u2019s not easy.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not looking for sympathy. I\u2019ve had a wonderful 40 years and I\u2019m well aware that I have been hugely privileged in being able to make it work out, but I know that amongst WalkHighlands readership there may be some folk who fancy a similar lifestyle, so I\u2019ve put together a few thoughts that may, hopefully, help them in setting out on the right trail.<\/p>\n

While I\u2019ve dabbled with photography, radio and television, essentially I\u2019m a writer. I\u2019m not a great writer of the Jim Perrin or Robert MacFarlane variety but a relatively successful jobbing writer who has strived to work within a very small and specialist field.<\/p>\n

In that sense I\u2019ve been very fortunate. When I started knocking out articles on an ancient sit-up-and-beg typewriter in the office of the Youth Hostel where I worked forty years ago there were very few others writing about the outdoors. <\/p>\n

\"cameron\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I learned very quickly to know my market. I familiarised myself with the magazines and newspapers that might be interested in the kind of outdoorsy themes I wrote about and I bombarded them with material, much of which was returned to me with a little bit of paper called a rejection slip.<\/p>\n

I remember the wildlife writer Jim Crumley telling me he once made a collection of such rejection slips. Such was this collection that he wrote a feature about it and sent it off to a newspaper. Three week later an envelope arrived with a crumpled and tea- stained slip inside. Written one it was one stark sentence: \u201cAnother one for your collection.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tom Weir spent a whole year sending out features here there and everywhere before he finally had something published and in my early years as a magazine editor I tried to encourage those who showed similar determination and grit, including a young lad from Lancashire called Chris Townsend!<\/p>\n

I was also aware that I had to improve my own writing skills, and learn how to \u2018market\u2019 the stuff I was scribbling. It\u2019s all very well having a strong desire to be an outdoors writer but unless you actually enjoy writing then there\u2019s little point in making it your career \u2013 you\u2019ll be spending a huge part of your time sitting at a word processor thinking up words. The outdoors stuff is only your research\u2026<\/p>\n

I enrolled in a Creative Writing course but much more importantly I learned how to \u2018visualise\u2019 success; I learned about the perils of procrastination \u2013 Charles Dickens once wrote: \u201cProcrastination is the thief of time, collar him,\u201d and throughout my career I\u2019ve realized that hard work and luck appear to go hand in hand. The harder I work the luckier I become\u2026<\/p>\n

I should make it clear that success rarely comes without effort – sometimes huge effort. In my early years as a writer I tried to balance my writing career with working as an outdoor instructor at a centre called Craigower Lodge in Newtonmore. That meant getting up a 6am, writing until 8am, teaching youngsters to climb or ski all day then coming home to write until 9 or 10pm.<\/p>\n

I had a young family at the time and I knew such a prolific output was unsustainable so I had to choose between writing and instructing. I chose the easier option\u2026<\/p>\n

After four decades of writing I\u2019ve come to the conclusion that mankind is made up of two kinds of people \u2013 those who can enjoy an experience for its own sake, and those who can enjoy an experience but then have to tell everyone else about it.<\/p>\n

I fall into that second category, and I think it\u2019s a crucial characteristic if you want to become an outdoors writer. And that story-telling characteristic has to be supported by passion, the driving force that will also create the raw material to work from. <\/p>\n

\"cameron2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Read all the best outdoor writers \u2013 Robert Louis Stevenson, Nan Shepherd, WH Murray, Tom Weir, Hamish Brown, Jim Perrin, Robert MacFarlane, Colin Fletcher and Edward Abbey, to name just a few, and the driving force behind them all is a passion for their subject. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m not convinced passion is something you can create \u2013 it comes from within you, and it\u2019s fuelled by the sensations you experience when you\u2019re in the hills, or backpacking the trails, or paddling a kayak, or riding a mountain bike. In short, you have to be passionate about your subject and to be passionate about the outdoors means spending a lot of time out there. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s why outdoors folk who present television programmes, like Nick Crane or Steve Backshall, are infinitely more passionate than those television presenters who happen to work on outdoor television shows. I\u2019ve enjoyed a successful television career spanning over twenty years and I put that success down to passion. A former BBC Controller, Michael Jackson, once described me as: \u201ccompletely un-televisual, but passionate.\u201d Ho-hum\u2026<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the characteristic that has remained with me all these years. That\u2019s why, at the age of 66, I\u2019m doing all these outdoorsy things this summer in celebration of 40 years as an outdoors scribbler. Will I write about them all? You bet\u2026 it\u2019s what I do!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THIS summer I\u2019m celebrating 40 years as an outdoor writer. I\u2019m going to mark the occasion by taking a rafting trip through the Grand Canyon with my two sons, followed by a five week campervan and mountain walking trip with my long suffering wife to the hills of France and Spain. Then, all going well, it\u2019ll be back on the training bike as I prepare for an autumn ride around the North of Scotland 500. In between I have to spend a few weeks working \u2013 I\u2019ll be filming my second series of Roads Less Travelled for BBC Scotland –…<\/span> <\/p>\n

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