This is my fourth attempt at writing a blog. I’m hoping this time I will have the dedication and the passion to sustain it for many years. Hell, I’ve completed a PhD in creative Writing. Surely I can commit to, and sustain writing a blog.
I began my first blog with bigpond to record my writing journey. All went well until I found it easier to jot crazily disjointed snippets and observations into a handwritten journal. Unedited, rambling words tumbled into those pages and the pages of eight more until this mature aged student graduated in 2013.
The second blog was to be a personal account of dealing with two hip replacements and hopefully be a font of knowledge for those contemplating the same operations. I talked about the joy of being pain free and once again walking, swimming, kayaking and travelling. I was so busy making up for lost time that I forgot to blog. Instead the Arthritis Magazine printed a two page article titled The Happy Hippie.
The third was designed to be a marketing tool when Ilura Press launched my debut novel Pickle to Pie. I was so busy dealing with my German ancestry that I forgot to blog.
I started a fourth blog titled Ayers Rock to Uluru. I was going to write every night and record my thoughts and experiences as I travelled from Melbourne to Uluru. It had been forty years since we camped at the base of the rock and I wanted to write about the differences between then and now. Great idea. I started out with enthusiasm, convinced that this was the perfect way to document the journey. Five posts later the blog was abandoned and a handwritten journal was thrown into the bottom of my bag. Both replaced by my iphone tape recorder.
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So why do I believe that I can do it this time? Because over the years I have been inspired by the passion, dedication and commitment shown by writing friends. The majority of them blog. Fellow PhD-er Carol-Anne Croker charts her bi-polar journey and is an ambassador for mental illness. Mairi Neil has commenced Up the Creek with a Pen writing about health, research and giving back. I would like to reveal their writing journeys, and the stories of other Australian writers in my blog. As the old political jingle proclaims ‘It is time’. The joy and passion have returned and I can’t wait to get started
