My Writing Process

Alex over at The Art of not Sitting Still wrote about his writing process and he has asked me to do the same.

I write but I don’t consider myself a writer if that makes sense. I often get pleasantly surprised when every now and then people compliment my writing specifically. I have no idea what my style is, I simply write. Subjects vary a lot, and I think my style varies too depending on the piece. Sometimes I like to do a little research about what I’m writing about and sometimes I do none at all.

As a young girl, I used to write a lot, privately. I had a few diaries which are still in my hometown bedroom and are really fun to read years later. I also wrote many poems and even wrote some to my first and biggest crush in 7th grade. I still can’t believe I gave them to him. Later, I had many friends ask me to proofread their essays. And in university I received the highest mark possible on the very first long essay project. Still, I never considered myself a writer or even a good writer. Mostly because I simply don’t think about it, I just do. I write when and what I feel like it.

So here are the questions:

What am I working on?

1. This blog. This blog has become a pretty big project in my life. It began when my husband and I moved to rural India and our lives there were simply too interesting not to share. I started documenting those adventures and the blog had a great response. A year and a half later this blog is more of a general travel blog about all of my travels, plus some food, photography and random personal life subjects.

2. An autobiographical book. There is a lot that happened before our move to India that I began writing about privately since 2009. This book is extremely personal and so there is an underlying fear to open up and be vulnerable to the world but like mentioned above with the blog, the stories are way too interesting and unique not to share. A couple of months ago I started reading it as to proofread it and found myself changing almost nothing to the original draft. But then I stopped and I still have about 2/3 of it to read/proof read. Don’t know when it and I will be ready for publishing.

How does my work differ from others on this genre?

There are a lot of travel blogs out there, and many much better than mine of people who have traveled way more than me, but I found that my background and my story is pretty unique, which you can get a glimpse of in my About page.

One random difference is that I post smoothie recipes because I love smoothies and making new creations and the readers seems to like them too.

Why do I write what I do?

Oh, I kind of answered this in the first question. Besides the narcissistic thought of thinking I have a life interesting enough to share with the internet world, I think I also actually enjoy writing. I write what I do to share my experience and possibly teach others a few good tips, lessons and recipes on top of it.

How does my writing process work?

For the blog I sometimes jot down ideas for post in a notebook (I love notebooks and still write on them a ton, mostly for lists), or I save ideas as drafts on wordpress, but mostly I simply write about anything interesting that I’ve done in my life including air travel trips, road trips, and new places I visit wherever I reside. A big part of my blogging is photography so photo taking and editing is definitely part of my work.

Pretty much whenever I have something to write about I simply open up a new post and start writing away. I mostly write what comes to my mind and sometimes do a little research for some things to be more informational like museums admission prices and tickets and historical background for example. I usually only re-read the draft once to check mostly for typos and schedule or publish; like some fellow bloggers I don’t do a lot of proofreading and most of my writing is just what flows from my brain.

What fuels me? Chocolate and tea.