A bit about Blogging

Over the past few months many people have asked about the blog, how long it takes and how we go about it, so we thought we would give you a little insight into how its done.

We have some basic rules to help structure the blog, one being that wherever possible the blog is no longer than 1.5 A4 pages in length, immaterial of how long we stay in a place.  This helps keep the blogs short and readable for you guys and means that we are not constantly writing…this is supposed to be a holiday you know!  We also try to mix in personal views of what we are seeing, some factual stuff about the place and something funny that’s happened to us (usually though the jokes are on me).

I write the first draft from ideas we both note down during our time in the place.  Once we have moved on, I write the blog usually coming back to it several times over the next few days to refine the ideas, add in funnier jokes (Editorial comment: Jokes, really?) and check the facts that we have used.  At any one time I may have a few blogs on the go, re-reading and refining.

Once I am happy with it or can’t stand the sight of it anymore, I pass it on to the editor in chief.  Emma reads it fresh for the first time, adds some of her own ideas, checks for mistakes, removes unfunny jokes and puts in funny ones and checks some of the facts I have quoted.  Once she is finished and happy we both read it together one last time.  Now we go through the pictures for that period and pull out the ones we think will work with the story and using a blog publishing tool (LiveWriter) we pull the words and the pictures together off line ready for when we get an internet connection.  Once we are on the internet we hit the publish button and its ready for you all to read a few seconds later.  It takes on average an hour per night to write, edit and publish these blogs which at times can be quiet difficult after a hard day sight seeing (yes ok, sometimes it is sitting on a beach) but knowing that people are reading it (and hopefully enjoying it) keeps us going.

In Asia it was very easy to publish as nearly everywhere had free internet or at least easy access to low cost internet cafes.  But as we have moved into more developed/modern countries this has got harder.  Internet in Australia is very hard to find and when you do find it, its very expensive….free is not a word they understand out here.  This is why rather than publishing a blog once a week there are large gaps and then 3 all at once.  With being in a campervan we now have a new challenge of power, as the laptop needs 240v and to get this we have to pay extra at a campsite.  So once the laptop has died I go round the campsite looking in toilets, camp kitchens, etc looking for power sockets to charge the laptop.  Thankfully so far, I have not been reported to the police for suspicious behaviour.  It has not always been possible to charge the laptop so it means that we can easily get behind with the blogs.

We started this at the beginning as a way of connecting with friends and family while we are away however its become so much more for us.  With such a long trip and with us doing so much we were in danger of forgetting some of the cool things we have done and seen, but now we have the blog as a permanent record of our adventures which ties in nicely with the 4000 + pictures we have taken so far. We both have cameras and we are independently taking photo’s.  Its fair to say many end up being the same so only the best get kept, but others are completely different showing just how differently we have been viewing the places and these are making some interesting photo memories for us.  We have even started pulling together a slide show to show friends and family when we are back.  We think we can condense it down to a single weekend and we are planning to accompany it with a soundtrack of the top 100 albums of all times playing all of the tracks J.  For those interested, once we have secured a date we will let you know as we are sure that the places will fill up quickly!!  John and Siobhain, we have reserved seats for you as we know just how much you love looking at holiday snaps!!

Many of you have commented on how much you enjoy reading it, with some very avid readers commenting that we should take up this professionally.  As you can imagine, we can’t write about everything and we have so much more material and funny stories (Emma is also keeping a diary) that we can’t fit in to our strict 1.5 page length.  So we have decided that when we get back we are going to try and turn this into a book and see if we can get it published.  Even if we can’t get it into an actual paper book, we can still self publish on the internet which could be very cool and if no one reads it who cares as we have something for ourselves.  So please keep reading and let us have your comments (abuse in some cases!) especially if you feel something is missing that we can talk about it.  Knowing you are following us keeps us going and we love it when we hear back from you.