Send postcards and help support poor communities

When traveling in countries with low wages ... don't just send emails, blogs or use skype to keep in touch with friends and family: use the old, but still useful, snail mail.

I love getting postcards so still send them to others, and by doing this I also help the small shop or street vendor, get a tiny wage, while making friends happy . You can do it too.

I buy a pile of postcards and the same number of stamps; then while waiting for a bus, or a meal, I sit and address them all, then as I have spare time, or a tale to tell, I write on the postcards and post them when I see a post box.

This post-box was in the north east of Cambodia.

Writers write don't they?

With travel pages shrinking and newspapers amalgamating, it’s getting harder to place travel pieces. So what is a travel writer to do when the numbers of places to publish are diminishing, and the money they send, dries up?
This writer has been beating herself up, saying ‘real writers’ write fiction anyway – so that’s what she ‘should’ do.

However, after attending a workshop on Writing Family History today, (by New Zealand Society of Author member Joan Curry), then a one-on-one mentoring session over coffee I am revitalised. Ready to gird my loins and go forth and write.

First a couple of stories on New Zealands’ Molesworth Station and Tekapo and its’ night sky, then a six month sabbatical from the pressure of ‘having to write for money’.

Back to writing daily ‘morning pages’ (Julia Cameron), back to ‘shitty first drafts’ (Ann Lamott) and back to writing because I want to. Writing non fiction, writing from where my heart is, and enjoying the freedom of not making myself write because I need the money or because I ‘should’.

Making this public is my commitment to myself, so watch my progress and send me words of encouragement, as I check into these pages to report on the journey. No more beating up on myself with those dreaded words from old school reports‘ should try harder’ or ‘could do better’.