Writing and Blogging

OK, so I feel like I just wrote the post discussing the five year anniversary of this blog, but nope, that was already a year ago. On April 12th, 2010, exactly six years and one day ago, I posted the first of many blog posts on This Battered Suitcase. I wasn’t new to blogging, however – I had been writing on a Livejournal account for seven years before that, which brings my blogging total to 13 years. It’s been one hell of a ride, and it’s nowhere near over – I love blogging and being a part of the blogging community more than ever. And because some of you have been reading for a while (some even since Livejournal!), and because I know that many things I’ve gotten out of blogging have been because of readers like you, I wanted to talk about the future of This Battered Suitcase as transparently and as honestly as I hope I’ve always been. For more on my history with blogging, check out what I wrote on the four year anniversary of the blog; much of what I say there still totally stands. I feel kind of silly writing these posts, but it also feels silly to let the anniversary slide when it’s something that takes up such a huge part of my life.

When I was growing up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, a mid-sized city smack-dab in the middle of the Canadian prairies, I used to lose myself in books – they were a way to take adventures. Later, in my teenage years, I became completely obsessed with the idea of travelling. I studied maps, I read National Geographic magazines, I watched as many travel documentaries as I could. And while I come from a family of travellers – my parents lived in a van in Europe in the 70s, and my sister went backpacking with friends around Australia and Asia just out of high school – most of the people I was seeing on TV or in magazines were men. I hadn’t yet discovered women like Freya Stark or Dervla Murphy, and blogs weren’t even a thing. The travellers I saw were weather-beaten and bearded, their names Pete and David and Jack. One of the first real backpackers I met, the one who helped actualise my wanderlust, was also male.

So, without further ado, here are fourteen amazing female travel bloggers – they are travellers, they are businesswomen, they are photographers, they are writers, they are innovators, and, to me, they are inspirational. They also happen to be my friends.

While so many of my friends are travel bloggers, and I love to read other travel blogs, I hope that my readership encompasses a much larger part of society. That being said, this post is most definitely about travel blogging. I’ve gotten a few emails from people wanting to start blogs or people who write with questions about blogging, so I thought I’d throw everything I know into this post.

I am not going to pretend that I am an authority on blogging, not at all – there are so many other bloggers who have created much more “successful” (more on that word in a minute) sites, and I encourage new bloggers to research what they have to say. I’ve included some of my favourite links at the bottom of this post. While I have indeed been blogging for twelve years and my job is focused almost entirely on blogging, what I have to say here is only going to encompass what I’ve learned about blogging on This Battered Suitcase.

The phrase “summer reads” gets thrown around a lot – I guess because summer implies sitting around in a garden sipping lemonade with a good book. Or sitting on the beach sipping a margarita with a great book (much better scenario, really). And while summer has already started long ago, it’s never too late to delve into a big old pile of books… right? Here are a few books I’ve read lately and can recommend, along with some books I’m eager to read this summer.

Over the last year and a half, my degree and my job have taken up most of my life. I have sadly had to let this blog slip behind a little bit, which breaks my heart. I love writing blog posts. Sometimes I go back and read old blog posts for inspiration for the book I’m writing, and once in a while I feel really proud of what I’ve written. A lot of the time, however, I cringe. I’m totally guilty of doing some really lazy travel writing. Lock me up and throw away the key, because I have definitely described a city as a “fascinating blend of the ancient and the modern”.

So, mostly out of sheer self-shaming (in the hopes that I never blog/write using these words again… or at least minimise my use of them) here are the words I think are overused in travel writing and travel blogging.

A couple of weekends ago my friend and awesome blogger Neil of Backpacks and Bunkbeds interviewed me via Skype; I thought I’d post it here, too, just in case you’re interested about some of my views on blogging and travelling.