Just Give It A Go - And I Have

I started this personal blog on February 11th, 2014 and in my very first post Just Give It A Go I said I had a 'plan'. I had already ticked off the first few items in a rather extensive list that I had put together to enable me to kick start my career in travel writing. I also indicated that I would post details on this blog from time to time to show how the rest of that plan was progressing.

I cannot quite believe how much I have achieved in a little more than one month.

I now have my ABN to allow me to start getting paid writing work. I just need to start pitching some of my story ideas to magazine editors.

I have had this personal blog professionally designed by Designer Blogs and introduced the tagline Writing about Life, Love, Adventure and Travel.

I have created a separate blog, Seven Marathons on Seven Continents which Steve and I will use to document our journey towards becoming members of the exclusive Seven Continents Club. This involves running a marathon on every continent across the globe.

I have created a separate blog, still in the design stages, Camino de Santiago which Steve and I will use to document our 800km walk across the top of Spain in 2015.

I have finally discovered Twitter and Instagram and have links on all of my blogs to both of these.

I have created a Facebook page dedicated to all things writing. This will also be the one place that will link all three blogs. At the moment I have just over 200 'likes' on this page. I am aiming for more than 1000.

I have enrolled in a Travel Photography Course and have decided to purchase my first DLSR camera. I plan to take lots of photos during our upcoming trips and I have had an Instagram box installed on both the Seven Marathons and the Camino de Santiago blog. The photos I take on the road can instantly be uploaded to these Instagram boxes.

I have purchased a voice recorder to use for the interviews I plan to do on my travels.

I attended the Blog to Book Course at the Australian Writers' Centre. It was interesting to learn that publishers now ask about a writer's social media presence and particularly want to know the numbers i.e how many Twitter followers, Facebook likes, etc.

I started my first online subject 'Introduction to Writing' which is part of the Professional Writing and Publishing degree I am undertaking at Curtin University.

I am currently undertaking the Australian Writers' Centre online course 'Magazine and Newspaper Writing Stage 1.'

I attended a talk with bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) as part of the NSW Writer's Festival and gained some great insight into the real world of writing. A week later I was very excited to meet Liz on my flight to LA. What a lovely person she was and she graciously spent time talking to me about my writing plans. And replied to my tweet the next day!

I have decided to enter the Australian Writers' Centre 'Best Blogs 2014' competition. They have a number of categories with some amazing prizes, one of which is a chance meet with a publisher to discuss the possibility of publishing a book based on a blog. Some of the categories in the competition that I've entered are 'Best New Blog' and 'Outstanding Humorous Post' along with a 'People's Choice' round. As my blog is so new, I will endeavour to increase my posts from once a week to at least twice a week to better showcase my writing style.

So that's the update on my 'plan'. I'm happy with how far I've come and know that this would not have been possible if I didn't spend time setting some ambitious yet achievable goals right from the beginning.