The Travel bug

Yes I know its been ages.

I haven't been feeling like writing for a while now as I've been sad. When I'm sad I'm not very good at writing (unless you all want to hear my morbid thoughts), running, cooking, sleeping or parenting - so its been an interesting few weeks but I'm beginning to feel the sun on my face and the joy of the simple things again.

So this post (and probably the next couple too!) are a retrospective look at some of the books I've read since October....

When we returned from our amazing trip to Africa I had been inspired by this lovely lady, Sue - we met on a sunset cruise on the Zambezi (as you do) - who told me that she was a travel writer and was writing a piece on travelling through Zambia and Botswana with her mother. Well - of course that seemed like a dream job and anyone who knows me, knows that I love a new career idea and I went into full research mode as soon as we came back to Australia.

Two books were recommended to me - firstly, Lonely Planet's guide to travel writing (recommended by Sue when I stalked her via email) and secondly, Travel Writing 2.0 - Earning money from your travels in the new media landscape by Tim Leffel (which was highly recommended by Book Depository).

Lonely Planet's guide to travel writing is a fantastic read about how to go about the business of travel writing, the styles to adopt, what to avoid and many, many useful tips.

Travel writing 2.0 on the other hand was a practical look at the realities of the 'business' of travel writing and promptly brought my idea crashing back to earth. It is a very difficult, competitive business with only a handful of writers around the world truly making a decent living out of it (my new friend Sue being one of them).

The realities of my life are of course that we are very settled in our home town, husband's business is here (and without which we couldn't travel!) and most importantly our children are settled here.

Instead I will indulge my love of travel and adventure sporadically. I just no longer expect to make any money out of the venture!

I do have lots of lovely ideas for places to visit in South Africa with children, so please don't hesitate to pick my brain....