10 things I learnt writing my first travel blog (Sunsets & Volcanoes: The Best Beer) and why I want to win the travel writing scholarship with World Nomads.
1. It’s harder than I thought.
Whenever I come home from a trip I regale my friends and family with your tales of my adventures – and there are usually adventures to tell because I’m one of those people who has that type of luck – you know where something goes wrong and is terrifying at the time, but makes for a hilarious conversation around the dinner table a couple of months later. So how hard can it be to write an entertaining, descriptive travel discovery in 500 words? Turns out very hard, and time consuming.
2. It takes longer than I expected
Whilst I can replay a memory in my head in five minutes flat it takes much long to turn that visual memory into a written story, especially into a story that you want someone you never met to engage with, to get them to smile when you smiled and cry when you cried – or at least feel like crying with you instead of laughing at you. It takes some honing and re-writing to get this across, in fact…
3. It takes skill to evoke emotions
It easy to say I felt happy at the top of the volcano and I felt like crying whilst clinging to the donkey for dear life. But it’s harder to describe how I felt without stating it as a fact. It’s even harder to get someone else to feel that for you – remember that high definition video replay of memory you run in your head and the parts that make you smile, well on paper that can come across a bit flat.
This is one of the reasons I want, no…need to win this writing scholarship with World Nomads so I can master the art of evocative writing and write better stories for you to read. Continue reading →
