How to Write Non-Fiction: What if you don’t know what kind of book you want to write?

I know how this feels because I’m a discovery writer.

I don’t plot or plan. I figure out what I’m writing by actually writing.

My memoir Pilgrimage is an example of this process of uncovering a book, because although I had been writing journals about my travels for decades, nothing emerged as a coherent potential project.

I knew I wanted to write a book with something to do with travel. I just didn’t know what kind of book it would be.

Travel is a big category, and I had a lot of different inspirations, which made it harder to choose.

My mum took me and my brother to live in Malawi, Africa, in the early 1980s and my memories of going to school there are full of the wonder of being ‘somewhere else.’ I remember looking out at the sunrise over the Sahara desert from the plane cockpit back in the days when they let kids go up there. Those were also the days when people still smoked on planes, and I remember how my mum made us breathe through handkerchiefs to save us inhaling too much.

Those early years triggered my wanderlust, and I started reading travel books in my teens. The Life of My Choice by Wilfred Thesiger, Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence, The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin, and so many more. I wanted to be like them and travel the world, experiencing everything and writing about my adventures.

Fast forward more than thirty years and I was writing non-fiction for authors, and also fiction as J.F. Penn, incorporating my travels into my stories. Morgan Sierra in my ARKANE thriller series is my alter ego, and her adventures and thoughts are often my own. Although, of course, I’m not ex-military and I don’t investigate supernatural mysteries or chase bad guys around the world for a living!

Despite all my published work in other genres, I still had a desire to write travel non-fiction, so in 2019, I started my site BooksAndTravel.page, with articles and photos about travel and books, as well as a podcast.

My aim was to use the site to write memoir-style essays and create thematic episodes around my travels as well as interview other writers. I hoped I would figure out what I wanted to write and build an audience along the way.

I did lots of solo podcast episodes on Books and Travel, including thematic pieces about why I travel, the importance of home in difficult times, and the three trips that changed my life, plus more focused pieces on topics like Venice, scuba diving, Oxford, Australia, Bath, and more. You can find them all at www.booksandtravel.page/listen.

I considered starting a separate business selling guided trips and retreats, as well as books and other travel-related products.

Then, in early 2020, the pandemic struck. The world changed.

The travel industry changed too, and I also learned more about how the business side of it worked.

My Books and Travel Podcast sustained me during the years of no travel, and slowly, I found examples of books that helped me to see a path to writing my own.

At first, I thought I would write an A to B travel narrative with personal elements, like Alastair Humphreys’ My Midsummer Morning.

I could write several such books, one per walk or solo trip, similar to Holly Worton’s Alone on the Ridgeway.

But after walking my first multi-day trip, the Pilgrims’ Way, I realised I didn’t want to write a book about individual routes.

I didn’t have enough material to make it a worthwhile narrative, and there were lots of other books that filled this gap. Also, if I started writing these kinds of books, then I’d need to write them for every trip. I still wanted to write other books, and I couldn’t see how I would have time for it all.

Then I discovered travel books which are more a series of trips hung around thematic chapters, and that seemed like a better fit for my project.

Open Road: A Midlife Memoir of Travel Through the National Parks by Toby Neal is a great example, as well as Not Quite Lost: Travels Without A Sense of Direction by Roz Morris. Both have chapters about different places interspersed with emotional aspects of memoir, and this is how I stumbled upon a way to shape Pilgrimage.

I found this to be a critical part of the writing process, as until I had a ‘model’ for my book, I struggled to structure it. Once I knew it would be thematic chapters with personal vignettes, it was easier to work out what the book might be — and that was after writing many tens of thousands of words.

I don’t consider those words wasted, though, because I was finding my way through the process and that in itself is rewarding.

I hope this encourages you if you’re struggling to figure out what the hell you’re writing. Just get words on the page, read around the niche, and you’ll get there, eventually.

Questions:

•   What are some books that resonate with you, that you feel could be models for your book?

•   Examine how the books are structured. What is the transformation for the reader across the book? How are the chapters ordered? What is the mix of factual versus emotional content?

•   How might your ideas fit into such a structure? How can you use elements of these books to help you with yours?

Resources:

•   Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways — J.F. Penn

•   Adventure, Walking and My Midsummer Morning with Alastair Humphreys — www.booksandtravel.page/walking-alastair-humphreys

•   Solo, Long-Distance Walking in England with Holly Worton — www.booksandtravel.page/solo-walking-england/

•   Open Road: A Midlife Journey Through the US National Parks with Toby Neal — www.booksandtravel.page/us-national-parks

•   Not Quite Lost: Travels Without a Sense of Direction with Roz Morris — www.booksandtravel.page/not-quite-lost

•   Ten Travel Book Subgenres — www.travelwritingworld.com/travel-book-subgenres