Susan Orlean at the Travel Writers Conference: on writing and immersion

Susan Orlean signs books at the Travel Writers Conference

Susan Orlean--prolific journalist, author of The Orchid Thief and Rin Tin Tin, and staff writer for The New Yorker--says her approach to writing a story is to just go and spend time with someone. Her preference is to throw herself into new situations. No agenda, no prepared questions. She calls it "a sort of emotional Outward Bound."

At this year's Travel Writers and Photographers Conference, held at Book Passage each August, Orlean was interviewed before an audience by conference chair and travel editor Don George.

Orlean likened immersion journalism to travel writing in that both forms follow "a voice of beckoning."

And, like travel, no matter how many times she meets success she inevitably faces "panic, despair and deep, existential loneliness." Part of her reporting process is telling a magazine she has no story.

"There's nothing worse than wandering around Midland," she said of the place in Texas where George W. Bush claimed he wanted to be buried. No story leads. Panic. Despair. Until she attended a real estate office BBQ and a petroleum luncheon "with crispy, 90-year-old oil men." The result: A Place Called Midland.

Orlean said she always wanted to be a writer. As a child she wrote little storybooks about her family's trips. She "always thought writing was magical," but she didn't know what kind of writer she wanted to be until an article in LIFE magazine caught her eye in high school. It was a slice of life story of a small town family doctor.

"I thought, 'I want to do that kind of story,' " said Orlean. So she made a pros and cons list, something like this--

Pros: fun, interesting.
Cons: no jobs, don't know how.

Thankfully none of the cons panned out. Her father urged--even bribed--her to go to law school (he's a lawyer who wanted to be a writer), but she convinced him to give her a year to try.