You become a better writer by writing. You become a better travel writer by writing about travel.

I am living out my adolescent dream of travel and adventure.

You have to first be a writer and somebody who loves to write. If I couldn't travel, I would still write.

Restless, and in desperate need of adventure, I quit my job at an insurance company to travel west with a couple of guys I smoked pot with, scandalizing my family.

If interstellar travel is as time- or energy- demanding as the above figures indicate, it is far from obvious what the motive for colonization might be.