Fearless Freelance Writer, Laura Kiniry
From “Sis Boom Bah,” She Went Quite Fa'
(This week’s blog reveals how one person found success in the highly competitive field of freelance travel writing. Want to get paid to travel and take pictures? Read on. Competing for a job? Shy person wondering how to come out of your shell? Read on.)
Do you know where to go to meet successful travel writers?
For four years, I didn’t. Then, this past summer, I finally found a travel writing conference outside of San Francisco. I paid the money and drove to the conference in Corte Madera.
Attending a conference like this as a novice writer is a bit nerve-wracking. I wondered, “Are they are all better than me? Will they accept me into the tribe?”
Conference welcome sessions are often awkward events, forcing me to put on a frozen smile and engage in endless small talk with strangers. Disinterested people often look past you, searching for more interesting connections. Then it’s, “Sorry. Gotta run.”
As the meet-and-greet began, everyone mingled aimlessly.
Then I met Laura Kiniry, a tall, slender woman with long dark hair. We read each other’s name tags. Hers said, “Faculty.” Time to say something brilliant and witty.
“Hi, Laura! So, will you be teaching one of our courses?” Best I could do.
‘Yes, I will,” she said. “Tell me a bit about yourself, please.” She waited for my reply. Damn. I wasn’t ready with my elevator pitch. I babbled a few words and stopped talking. She nodded, as in, “Go on.”
She was waiting for more. No one waits for more. What was happening?
For those who have seen E.T., this is when the UFO flies over. A blinding light seemed to block out everything. Time stopped. People vanished. I felt transfixed. She cared!
Caught off guard, I blurted, “You are a charming person!” “Oh, thank you,” she replied.
***
I had been on the road for three years, traveling in a campervan with my dog. No one focused on me, a portly 67-year-old man, only on my cute little dog, Mr. Bones, whose charming personality and affectionate nature drew people over to us like a magnet.
On the road, everybody asks my dog’s name, but nobody asks my name. I am just an old man with a cute dog. People said, ‘Hello, Mr. Bones,” and “Goodbye, Mr. Bones.” Even, “I love you, Mr. Bones.” But they usually ignored me; that is what I expected.
It threw me off when a conference faculty member took an interest in me.
Nowadays, it is rare to meet a person who possesses an exceptional combination of charm, warmth, attentiveness, and empathy, as well as attunement (the ability to recognize how a person feels, accurately) to such an unusual degree that you trust that person, instantly.
I call this phenomenon the Kiniry Effect. What is it? Who possesses it?
Analyzing The Kiniry Effect
With my analytical mind, I had to figure out what happened. I Googled, “How many people possess this combination of skills?” According to some estimates, it occurs in one in a thousand people. In my experience, I would say one in five or ten thousand.
Laura is the only such person I have ever met. Try to recall how many you have met.
Why is she this way? Writers are thought of as shy introverts, more comfortable alone than in a crowd, yet freelancers like Laura tend to possess and rely on good people skills. If your job is to get the story, you need a way to get people to talk to you.
She seems to do this naturally, not as a sort of gimmick. That’s what is so amazing.
The Secrets to Success as a Freelancer
Laura was teaching a course on how to succeed as a freelancer, so I signed up.
What could be the secret to freelance success? The odds of succeeding in writing are about the same as the odds of making it in the NBA or in the music business.
In the session. Laura presented the material with two other women, Kimberley and Jill. They matter-of-factly explained their simple secrets to freelance success.
· Learn everything about the periodicals you hope will hire you to write articles
· Know what kinds of articles each periodical wants, and which they won’t publish
· Determine how far in advance to pitch ideas to them and schedule pitch dates
· Know the exact publishing format each one uses, down to the font type and size
· Know the editors and their quirks
As a person challenged by keeping track of what day it is, this seemed an impossible level of organization and planning. There are thousands of periodicals.
I raised my hand and expressed astonishment at what they had accomplished.
Laura informed us that in the past year, she had sold 60 stories, over one per week. Online sources say that would put her in the top tier of annual sales by a freelancer.
***
The Roots of Her Success
Who is Laura Kiniry? How did a young woman from South Jersey rise to the top of her profession? In the interview, I have an hour to figure out who she is. Not much time.
Online research revealed that she started college at the venerable Mount St. Mary’s University. “So,” I said, ‘You went to a big Catholic university. And your last name is Irish. Do you come from a big Irish-Catholic family, by any chance?”
I figured it was OK to ask her this because I grew up Catholic and knew about such things. A pause on her side. She corrected me. “An Irish-Italian family.”
Oh. A double-barreled Catholic family. I wondered what it was like at their dinner table. “I want pizza!” “I want fish and chips!” “Bring me a Guinness.” “Red wine!”
***
Laura said she was born to travel. I had to find out how it came to be. “Can you tell me where you got the travel bug? Was it from your mom or your dad, perhaps?”
Her father, she said, was a calm, nurturing Irish-American, and “An armchair traveler. He loves thinking about it. He talked a lot about traveling (but seldom did any.)”
But, she said, “My Mom always wanted to travel.” And her Mom wanted Laura to travel. “When I was growing up, my mother would buy me international Barbies.”
Certain comments get your attention. What is this International Barbie doll thing?
International Barbie launched in 1979. Italian Barbie came out in 1980, when Laura was just six years old. Irish Barbie, on the left, bearing a strong physical similarity to Laura, came out in 1984, when she would have been 10 years old. Though she got several of the dolls, she did not have the Irish one.
I bet she loved those dolls.
***
Laura had a way of dropping bread crumbs for me so I could follow the trail.
I had to delve into my imagination. It seemed to me that the gift of dolls was her mother’s way to encourage Laura to travel, but also to show her dark-haired daughter she was beautiful just the way she was.
She sounded like a kind, proud Italian-American mother of a kind, proud daughter.
A Writer Is Born
When the subject turned to writing, Laura could not conceal her passion and pride. The question opened the floodgates.
‘When did you know you wanted to be a writer? Do you remember anything you wrote?“ ”Oh, I started writing as a girl. I was quiet and shy, but I was good at writing.”
‘Can you give me an example of a story?” I asked. “In 8th grade, I wrote a story called The Watcher in the Window that my teacher (Mrs. Markey) put up on the overhead.”
“Did you win any prizes for writing?” I asked, suspecting she had won many. “I won our eighth-grade essay contest on Why The U.S. Constitution Matters. I was the prize winner for my school.” One sentence read, “It is our freedom written on paper.” Nice.
‘Who decided the winner?” I asked. “It was blind judging (by the priests at school).”
“What did you win?” “I got to march in Philadelphia’s bicentennial Constitution parade in autumn (1987).” “Wow!” I said, expecting her to go on. She stopped there.
“So,” I asked, “were you the grand prize winner?” “No. The grand prize winner was a boy from Most Holy Redeemer, who ended up being my first-ever boyfriend.”
Aha! I wondered about her first romance. She found her Mr. Write.
***
“But,” I asked, “Can you tell me more about how it felt being in the parade?” This was no small affair. About 250,000 people attended the parade on September 17th in Philadelphia.
My inner omniscient narrator assumes her parents, brothers, and relatives on both sides of the family attended the parade to see Laura march by. I can almost see them pointing her out and hear them shouting: “Hey, that’s Laura, our Laura, the writer!”
She replied, “I was thrilled to march in the 200th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution parade.” “Thrilled?” I said. “That does not seem very effusive, coming from a writer.”
She wrote back. “I tend to keep my feelings to a minimum unless I’m getting paid.”
Great quip.
Persistence as a Defining Trait
Next, I said. “You have achieved success as a freelance writer. You mentioned not taking no for an answer, pursuing a travel publisher until you got to write the New Jersey guidebook. That is persistence. Where does such persistence and determination come from?” Ask this teenager.
Oh, gosh, well, when I was in high school, I tried out for the cheerleading squad, and got cut.” In her voice, I heard the pain she still felt from that episode. She really wanted to be on the cheerleading squad.
I asked, So, what happened? Did you win a spot?”
“The cheerleading squad tryout was probably in ‘85,” she said, “They said I wasn’t vocal, energetic, or poised enough.”
In my imagination, I heard the other girls shout, “SIS BOOM BAH!” in their outside voices, while shy, quiet Laura used her inside voice: “Sis boom bah.” She got cut.
“So what did you do?” I asked.
“I practiced projecting my voice, doing moves better, and getting outside my comfort zone.” The next year, the other girls SIS BOOM BAH’ed, but Laura shouted, “SIS BOOM BAH!”
“So you got selected?” ‘Yes.” “How did it go?” “Oh, I quit immediately to play basketball.”
I love it. She said, “I just wanted to prove to myself that I could make the squad.”
Touché.
***
Career Breakthroughs & Global Adventures
I couldn’t connect the dots from her precocious writing in grade school and high school to becoming a successful freelance writer. I asked her to fill in the blanks.
She recounted why she left Mount Saint Mary’s after two years, to the chagrin of her parents. “I went the path of leaving home at 21. I didn’t finish college back on the East Coast… I just wanted to get out of New Jersey… to see the world.”
I could understand that; I left Indiana to spend a junior year studying in France.
But there must have been repercussions. “What did your parents say?” “My folks were unhappy about my leaving Mount Saint Mary’s… like, ‘Good luck. It’s on you.’”
“You finished at San Francisco State University, didn’t you?” I asked. “What brought you all the way from the East Coast to the West Coast?” This was a leap of over 2,000 miles.
“My cousin lived in San Francisco. She said, ‘Come stay with me.’ At the time, state schools were still inexpensive. At San Francisco State, later, I got grants to pay (my rent). I graduated in 2001 (after) waiting tables all through school.”
The “long and winding road” to her success became hard to follow, but at some point, she had to move back east. I asked what happened then.
“When I came back (home), we went to Chili’s for dinner. (My Dad) said to me, “I knew you couldn’t do it without me.” He had always been a sort of sidekick for her adventures. It was one of those awkward times when a parent misspeaks, and inadvertently, feelings get hurt.
“Ouch,” I said. “What did you do? What did you say?”
“Oh, my God,” Laura said. “(After that) I made it my mission (to succeed). I didn’t say anything (to him), but I was like, ‘I will now do everything (to succeed).”
“(After finishing college) I lived sparingly while chasing assignments. I saw Craigslist had a call for a writer to do a New Jersey guidebook. I’m from New Jersey.” Moon Guidebooks, based in the Bay Area, needed someone. I applied. I got turned down numerous times but kept calling. After lots of rejections, I wore them down.”
Aha. “Surrender! All resistance is futile!” This astonished me; I’m not that persistent.
***
It was her first big break.
She launched her career on the Moon Guides assignment, plus jobs with other local travel publications like Ethical Traveler, Travelers’ Tales, and an internship at Via, the AAA travel magazine.
“I became a paid intern at Via, the AAA travel magazine,” she said. “That was huge. They taught me the ins and outs of the (travel) magazine business.”
***
We talked about amazing pieces she had written.
“Tell me about climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest freestanding mountain in the world.”
Laura said, “I met this woman representing Exodus Travel. She was looking for a writer to take on one of their trips. I was like, “I like adventure. Let’s do something adventurous.”
(The woman) said, “Would you be willing to climb Kilimanjaro?” “Yes, of course.
So they invited her on the trip. This kind of thing happens to Laura. Not to me.
The Kiniry Effect, again. Her warmth and charm seem to do the trick.
“So, what happened?” I asked, wondering if she summited Kilimanjaro?
“Mountain climbing was something I was interested in. There were five of us. It was an eight-day trek on the Lemosho route. It was a women’s group. Our guide was Lucia Kivoi. They call her the Lioness; she pioneered female guiding on Kili.”
“What was the hardest part for you?” I asked (discreetly omitting that I had signed up to climb Kili, but for reasons beyond my control, had had to cancel the trip.)
“The summit night was very difficult. The night before, at camp, I was thinking, ‘What am I doing?’ It was cold. It was rainy. It was snowing. I was damp. The sun never came out long enough for us to dry out.”
“So did you make it to the top?” (19,341 feet!) She said. “I told myself, ‘We’re gonna make this happen.’ I don’t know how I made it to the top.”
But she did. It was her triumphant, “Sis boom bah!” all over again.
***
Reflections on Succeeding in Tough Times in a Tough Business
Are you getting a clear picture of what it takes to become a successful freelance travel writer? I Googled what it takes.
“A successful freelancer possesses, even personifies, persistence, pragmatism, tolerance for rejection or disappointment, trusting in their own voice and their own talent.”
Easy. “Freelancing is about turning every ‘no’ into fuel for the next ‘yes.’” Cue the music. Another One Bites the Dust, by Queen. “We are the champions, my friends…”
Maybe you, too, can go beyond the person you once were to become the person you always dreamed of being.
***
A Role Model and A Writer to Watch
In terms of her talent, determination, and track record, Laura is an outstanding role model for travel writers. Not only that, but she was born with, or has cultivated, exceptional interpersonal skills that, as far as I can figure, make it almost impossible for editors or anyone else not to like her.
Why would anyone try? Resistance is futile. Just enjoy the Kiniry Effect.
Thank you, Laura! We will watch for your bylines. Keep writing. We’ll keep reading.
For further information, or to follow her adventures, see:
Facebook (5) Instagram Home / Laura Kiniry
On the Rooftop of Mount Kilimanjaro, Women Rule March 6, 2025, Osprey.com
Thanks for highlighting a New Jerseyan
What an amazing woman! My thinking is, you can't be anything you want, but you can try, and in trying you might find out something better that you want to be and can be! For example, I wanted to be a ballerina, but I'm the world's biggest klutz. So I used the nonstop talking skills I had and built a career as a talk show host! A circuitous road, but it worked!