An Interview with Talon Windwalker

Talon Windwalker is truly an inspiration in the travel writing world. Last year, he left his traditional job and, together with his newly adopted son, decided to travel the world and start a blog, 1dad1kid. In our interview, Talon talks to me about his decision to enter the travel blogging world and how his life has changed since he began his journey over a year ago. Enjoy!

How did you get started in the travel blogging world?

I had a blog for a few years when I was preparing to adopt my first child.  When I made the decision to leave “normal” life behind and leave the States with my son to slowly travel the world as full-time nomads, I thought a blog would be a great way of sharing our adventures with family and friends.  As we started preparing, I realized that the blog could actually have a bigger reach and maybe be used as a means of inspiring others to pursue their dreams.

Where do you see your career as a travel writer being three years from now? How will your income mix change and what are you doing to adapt to the changing media landscape?

I hope to be in more outlets than online sites and magazines.  I would love to see some of my work end up in traditional print as well.  I don’t see my income mix changing much since I’m already pretty diversified.  I would love to see it grow, though.  I am planning on possibly adding a couple of other blogs to my repertoire, one of which will be more commercially minded, and hopefully that will help as well.

The media landscape sure does change fast! I try to become an early adopter of services that look promising so that by the time they’re popular I already have a good grasp.  It can be tough, though, as I don’t wish to spend 12 hours a day on the computer.

Knowing what you do now, if you were starting from scratch today to become established as a travel writer or blogger, what steps would you take to ensure success?

I would definitely learn more code (like CSS) and design.  When something goes wrong with my site, I’m almost clueless as to how to fix it and have to run to others.  Also, my lack of knowledge in that arena makes me more dependent on ready-made themes, and it took me a long time to find one that matched my idea of what I wanted for 1Dad1Kid.com.

One thing I feel I did right was to take time to interact with many travel bloggers before I really started focusing on mine.  Having those connections in advance really helped me.  Also starting the blog before we actually began our travels was helpful.

What advice would you give to someone near and dear to you who wanted to become a travel writer—assuming they had zero credits to their name. (Besides “Don’t do it”?)

I would never say “Don’t do it.”  Everyone has to live their own passions.  What I would say is don’t expect to become rich, don’t get discouraged, be tenacious, be open to feedback and changing your style until you really find your voice, and don’t pursue it unless you REALLY love the topic.  There are a lot of people out there writing about travel.  If you don’t have a passion for both writing and travel, you won’t stand out.

Tell us a little bit about your site, http://1dad1kid.com/. What gave you the inspiration to start the site, how did you get it off the ground, and how has it fared so far? Where do you see it headed in the future?

I already knew I had wanted to blog about our adventures but didn’t have a name I felt was memorable.  Then one day while I was driving between patients (I worked in home hospice) it came to me:  1 Dad, 1 Kid, 1 Crazy Adventure.  That’s obviously too long for a URL, so for the “brand” name I went with 1Dad1Kid.  It seemed appropriate since I’m a single parent traveling with my child.  I originally started it on Blogger, but then some more seasoned bloggers steered me toward WordPress.  At first my readers were mostly friends. Then as I started developing relationships with more bloggers and travelers, people started checking out my blog.  Our story is unique enough that people kept coming back.  As my writing and photography have matured, it’s gained in popularity.  Doing interviews on other blogs and in some online publications has really helped as well.  I work really hard at engaging with my readers which I believe has helped as well.

So far the site has exceeded my expectations, the best part being the many emails I’ve gotten from people who felt inspired and are now pursuing their dreams more seriously.  I figure if I’ve managed to inspire others to live their dreams, then it’s been a success.  It’s also been a great outlet for my writing.  I can be more personal and less formal on the blog than when writing for other formats.

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Talon Windwalker is a single parent, former hospice chaplain, Zen monk, ultra runner, snowshoer, endurance cyclist, certified endurance running coach, scuba instructor, photographer, and lover of travelling, languages, and cultures. In addition to running his blog, he is also a regular blogger for TravelingDad.com and TravelGeneration.com.

Interview conduced in August, 2012 by Kristin Mock.