I now have oodles of respect (or should I say, even more respect than I had before) for my favourite travel bloggers. I’ve been writing about travel on this blog for a few months now, and most of the time it’s been easy. I’ve been at home, with lots of time at the computer and with internet access.
Now that I’m actually traveling, it’s a lot harder. I’m moving around from place to place, having fun, and it’s hard to convince myself and my traveling companions that it’s time for an internet break.
It’s even harder when I’m traveling with people. I’m used to being a lone wolf when I travel. Sure, I meet traveling companions along the way, but those relationships are a lot different when you bring along people from “home.” I’m used to following my own schedule, which is really easy because it is without any compromise. But now I’m trying to balance the wants and needs of myself and my two friends, and that means that’s it’s a bit harder to be an internet addict.
Also, my writing is so based on memory – those things that seem sharp and clear to me months after the fact. Now, when I’m living the stuff, how do I know what is important?
Those of you that do find the time to blog -and blog well – while you travel, how do you do it? What are the tricks for knowing what is interesting, what is important?
I’m sure I’ll catch on soon… this is just a change of pace.
Anyways, my two friends and I are in Antigua again. We’ll be here for a few days more. Sheena goes back to Canada in three days, and Jen and I go to Xela on Sunday. There I’ll settle into a routine again since I’ll be in Xela until the end of August.
(I’m starting to realize that I’m semi-nomadic as opposed to a complete vagabond… I like to stay in a new place for a few months, get to know it there, and then move on and discover somewhere new.)
Those of you (okay, the one of you) that has been asking for photographs… more will be coming soon!
Poor San Juan La Laguna… their fair was rained out.
San Pedro La Laguna is filled with evangelical signs.
Comments 5
I also have huge respect for them. Not so much that they find the time to write, but that they BOTH find the time to write AND to do things that are worth writing about.
Did you bring a computer? On my trips, very short and occasional compared to what you do, I have always looked for a way to keep those at home in touch. I started with phone calls, but seldom made them. I wrote in a journal, but seldom shared the stories. When e-mail became possible, I was able to keep in touch, but not from the road. So when I got back I wrote articles for newsletters and sent these to people. Later, with internet cafe’s available, I tried to write, and sometimes did, but it was always tough. I always wanted a cheap, small device to write my stories from wherever. There have been a number of different ones made, one of the early ones was made by HP that allowed you to e-mail anywhere you could fine a phone line. I tried a few different devices, but none of them really worked for me. Now, I will travel with a netbook computer. The small ones have finally come down in price and size to where I would not mind carrying it with me. I want to be able to write from a hammock, or in bed at night, or wherever suits me at the moment. I do not need or want 100% internet connectivity, but to be able to write electronically any time is great. I suppose that I will one day get a CrackBerry when the price of service comes down. One of these would be OK even without connectivity if I could put the files onto a flash memory so they could be downloaded into e-mail at an internet cafe. I tried that with a Palm pilot, but there were other issues that made me dump it.
But none of this gets to the real issue, finding the time to write. When with others, I crave alone time. I find it hard to get away without feeling guilty, much less getting away and using a ‘puter. When traveling alone, I find it hard to sit and write, even with a computer handy. SO…. What I do, and have done for a long time, is to always carry a paper with me, to write down bits of stories, observations, memory joggers, facts, lies, whatever. Then, when I can get the time or find the mood, I have a write-a-thon and put it all in the ‘puter. I have not traveled since I got the netbook, but I suspect that it will be easier to find the time to find to write. BUT….. ‘puters for me are like an addiction. Hence the fact that I am sitting and writing when I should be changing the tires and oil on my bike and prepping it for vacation.
Good luck with your quest. I like your writing style. Maybe you should shift your writing a bit. Make notes and maybe a preliminary story, and hold onto it for a month and write when things are sharp and clear. Have a way (twitter?) to keep people informed as to where you are right NOW, then write details later. I plan on using my blog and my phone to write twitter like notes when there are big changes as to my location, then write better stories later.
OR not….. GOing back to work now, enjoy the trip.
Bob L
Posted 27 Jun 2009 at 1:01 pm ¶Haha, yes, it is exponentially more difficult to do when traveling with other people. This is what I do:
I don’t say that I am going to “blog,” I say that I am going to “work,” and I often try to set a time out of each day to do it.
So I say, “Later, I am going to work now. Have fun.”
Oftentimes, I just tell people that I work on the internet and leave it at that.
And then I take off and write for a couple of hours.
Regardless of whether or not you are really “working” is irrelevant — it works.
Though I treat the website as if it is a job, regardless of how much money I make from it — it is the only way I have found to be able to justify making time as I do for it.
Your travelogue is very good — better than most of the crap written in travel mags — and I think that you should treat it as work.
. . . if only because I like to read it haha.
Hope this helps.
Going to get married now.
Wade
Posted 28 Jun 2009 at 5:25 am ¶Well, since the people above me refered to the finding the time thingy (which for me I will some up in the sentence – “I want to write in my blog, see you tomorrow!”) I will give me two cents worth on the topic of choosing what to write about.
It’s simple, really – whatever YOU find interesting.
This is a blog. Your writing skills are good enough to make it entertaining no matter what you write about. Since a period of time is required anyways to let memories set and seperate the wheat from the chafe (I had to ask my friend for that proverb, heh), there’s nothing you can do right now about this feeling that the blog is not as focused as it should be. You can always return to it later and take out stuff you’d find irrelevent in the future and fill in stuff you didn’t have time or thought were important today.
Of course, that’s exactly what you’re doing now, and the blog is interesting because of that. So I guess this entire blurb I just wrote was only a confirmation that what you’re doing is, well, it’s ok, you know? The fact you might look at it differently in the future doesn’t take away from it. Right now you seem to say – ooo! I went to this restaurant and we got cheap food! – and you write about that. If there wasn’t anything else that went on that day and that’s what you decided to write about, it must have been important to you.
That was too long, but I’m too lazy to cut parts out.
I liked the fairy wheels.
Rotem
Posted 28 Jun 2009 at 7:27 am ¶Thanks for the support and suggestions!
Bob – I think it’s a good idea to use an old fashioned notebook to write down observations. Too many times have I noticed something funny, only to forget it once I am anywhere near a computer.
I am actually traveling with my brand new netbook too! It’s a little Acer Inspire… it’s pink and I’ve named it “Girlfriend.” It both makes me embarassed AND giggly whenever I take it out. I think that once I am in the swing of things, though, that it will help my writing immensely. \
Wade – the “work” thing is a great suggestion. I actually kind of used that the other day, when I was hanging around the guesthouse in Guatemala City. One of the staff seemed to think it was weird that I was spending so much time on the computer. I told him I was “working” and suddenly he acted differently.
Don’t worry, I will continue to write, and I am happy that you enjoy the blog.
Rotem: I agree with you for the most part, but I don’t want to be one of those writers that thinks that everything that interests me will by default interest others. You are right, though… write well enough and anything can be interesting.
Posted 28 Jun 2009 at 8:52 pm ¶Well, I was thinking about it after writing it. It’s not only writing well, part of it is of course knowing what to write. Thing is – you seem to avoid writing about stuff that aren’t interestin,g or maybe I’m just biased (good chance actually).
In general, I’d say a rule of thumb is to keep writing about something your readers would not be aware of. This can be a new place that readers haven’t been to or a new way to describe a place that readers HAVE been to or an experience you’ve gone through that’s less usual than the common “I had so much fun!”
If you keep writing about original experiences you can’t really fail. And since you probably read more travel writing than I do, you know how to avoid common writing topics better than me.
Anyways, just keep writing.
Posted 28 Jun 2009 at 9:29 pm ¶Post a Comment