19. Where Does My Love of Writing Come From?
Geez, I dunno.
Maybe because I can’t draw a stick man to save myself I have to express myself in words? I’ve never had a problem with writing but never really thought about loving it. Before I joined Medium at the end of 2020, I had only written about my trips firstly in a handwritten journal of my travels before going online.
Then in 2011, on my first whistle-stop trip around Europe for four and a half months, I wrote my own online travel blog for my friends which then morphed into travel stories for retireon.com.au and then startsat60.com in 2019. I was paid something like $15 for each story on the former and could win a $100 shopping voucher if my story was chosen as the story of the week, which most weeks it was.
I can’t say I loved either of them. I had to join as an Amazon affiliate and advertise things I’d never tried for the first, which I hated doing, and with the other, the editor could make changes to my story and completely stuff it up.
I was proofreading and editing my friend Katie Michaelson’s stories at the end of 2020. She’s a brilliant writer, poet and storyteller, but she used to struggle with grammar and spelling because of her brain injury. There’s one thing I’m good at — editing. I’m a much better editor than I am a writer. She convinced me to try writing on…
