The_Veg
D'OH!
If a goober like me can get an article into the Owners News (and I've had two), then any member who can form a few hundred consecutive coherent sentences and include some nice pictures can do it.
Just follow your inner directive! No need to try to compete with the slick Euro-tour article, or the 'ride your GS up Everest' article, or the travel-slide-show-article; you certainly CAN do that, and the result might be good, but try something else if your imagination takes you there. Maybe do an article on all the good hole-in-the-wall eateries you could stitch together with a day-ride route in your area? Maybe a humourous article on how your riding affects your family dynamic? How about a review of a product that helps your riding, but which nobody else might have thought of because it's not a motorcycle-specific product? Perhaps there's an interesting event (or if we're lucky, even a downright quirky event) near you that makes for a good ride and/or a good gathering of riders. Maybe we could have a new one-pager with a different member each month writing about how motorcycling changed their life- I'll betcha donuts to drain-plugs that there are some great stories there!
If you do feel the urge to write a travel article, try breaking the mold on those and structure it a bit differently. While a chronological account of your trip is generally a good guideline for readers to understand your experience, the same old 'I rode here, ate here, saw this, then rode there, saw that, ate that, etc...' style of writing can get a little dull after a while. Try including paragraphs here and there that might be helpful advice to a reader who might want to go to the same place, or even write some sidebars to cover practical advice. Maybe sprinkle in some paragraphs that break from the five W's and instead examine your personal experience- how you felt, thoughts you had, etc. Get creative with the pictures too- I think that there is LOTS of un-tapped potential here that our writing members tend to ignore.
I'm bikeless right now so there's not much I could probably contribute in the near future, so that means that the rest of y'all need to get on it. Ride like the wind, then WRITE like the wind!
Just follow your inner directive! No need to try to compete with the slick Euro-tour article, or the 'ride your GS up Everest' article, or the travel-slide-show-article; you certainly CAN do that, and the result might be good, but try something else if your imagination takes you there. Maybe do an article on all the good hole-in-the-wall eateries you could stitch together with a day-ride route in your area? Maybe a humourous article on how your riding affects your family dynamic? How about a review of a product that helps your riding, but which nobody else might have thought of because it's not a motorcycle-specific product? Perhaps there's an interesting event (or if we're lucky, even a downright quirky event) near you that makes for a good ride and/or a good gathering of riders. Maybe we could have a new one-pager with a different member each month writing about how motorcycling changed their life- I'll betcha donuts to drain-plugs that there are some great stories there!
If you do feel the urge to write a travel article, try breaking the mold on those and structure it a bit differently. While a chronological account of your trip is generally a good guideline for readers to understand your experience, the same old 'I rode here, ate here, saw this, then rode there, saw that, ate that, etc...' style of writing can get a little dull after a while. Try including paragraphs here and there that might be helpful advice to a reader who might want to go to the same place, or even write some sidebars to cover practical advice. Maybe sprinkle in some paragraphs that break from the five W's and instead examine your personal experience- how you felt, thoughts you had, etc. Get creative with the pictures too- I think that there is LOTS of un-tapped potential here that our writing members tend to ignore.
I'm bikeless right now so there's not much I could probably contribute in the near future, so that means that the rest of y'all need to get on it. Ride like the wind, then WRITE like the wind!