...and premature Springer-style year-end ‘Final Thought’

It’s been a busy week writing-wise – a couple of things that have been in the works for awhile have been published, and some other stuff is on the boil… Exciting times!

Today my first feature item ran on World Hum, which is pretty huge when you consider that less than six months ago I was sitting in my apartment feeling like nothing was ever going to happen with my travel writing dreams, and having thoughts like this one: “If I could ever break into World Hum, that would be, like, the fulfillment of all my life goals.” Check it out if you get the chance! It’s called Confessions of a Cross-Border Shopper, and Mike and Jim’s lovely edits make me seem much more thoughtful and much less shallow than I actually am.

http://www.worldhum.com/speakers_corner/item/confessions_of_a_cross_border_shopper_20071129/

Also at World Hum, today saw my first effort at creating more original, personal items, rather than playing off other published pieces: About that Canadian Flag on my Backpack.

http://www.worldhum.com/weblog/item/about_that_canadian_flag_on_my_backpack_20071210/

Hopefully y’all (see, Keri, I don’t think I can really pull that off) already saw my story about Robert Mugabe and Zimbabwe on Matador last week – that’s the item I saw on the Bounty Board way back in August that got my involvement with this community started! So I guess I have Mugabe to thank…? Also enjoyed seeing that community-written item go up at The Traveler’s Notebook today: Best Seasonal Jobs for Traveling.

Finally, I filled in for Tim with Tales from the Road this week, which was a lot of fun. (Thanks, Tim!)

http://www.bravenewtraveler.com/2007/12/11/tales-from-the-road-afghanistan-thailand-canada-nigeria/

2007 Final Thought, Springer-style:

It will be one year on Saturday since I got off a plane (four hours late, surprise surprise) from London Gatwick, after 16 months of graduate study and travel, and decided to spend the next year at home making a genuine effort to break into the whole freelance travel writing scene. The first eight months were a pretty tough grind – I had travel debt and school debt and loan-from-my-parents-to-make-first-and-last-month’s-rent debt and January and February were given over to working four different jobs at one point or another, seven days a week, trying to sort that out. In March I landed my current job, phased out the others, and started to get serious about researching markets, keeping up with some key sites and publications, writing writing writing, and sending out stories.

All through the spring and summer I got rejection after rejection (or in most cases, no reply at all), and then in mid-August a string of events occurred one after another: I discovered Matador and landed the Zim story, I went to Book Passage and met all sorts of wonderful friendly encouraging people and learned a lot, and then – not long after getting back from San Francisco – I landed blogging gigs with World Hum and Vagablogging. Needless to say, there’s plenty of work (and plenty of rejection letters) ahead before that magical day when I can quit my day job and call myself a full-time writer, but today that possibility seems a lot more real than it did one year ago.

If I didn’t make this clear enough up above, I’d consider the day I stumbled across Matador to be the turning point in my efforts so far. If I ever get to the point where people are interviewing me about my “big break” you can bet I’ll be talking about the Bounty Board, Matador, and all of you wonderful folks.

Geez. I’m going to get emotional here if I’m not careful.

ps: Where has the hyperlink function gone on the blog entry form?