Image by WritingTravel.com via Flickr
Yes, I've neglected this blog for the last month, and the fifth anniversary of publishing at WritingTravel.com has since passed, unmarked. In all that time, Writing Travel has refused to focus on its niche, which, I guess, is writing about travel or writing about travel writing. Instead, it's become the vehicle for whatever I wanted to say at the moment.
Yesterday, I launched a actual, honest-to-gosh niche blog, Traveling Pains, as a platform for a topic about which I can say, without pride, I am an expert. Content is still sketchy, and the design is spare, but I did finally use my license for Thesis on a start-from-scratch Wordpress site. I've had the idea kicking around for some years, but it wasn't until I discovered Liz Hamill Scott's blog on the same topic, Travels With Pain, that I overcame my fear of outing myself as an expert on coping with hidden disability and chronic pain.
In other matters, I've taken over cost and responsibility for National Travel Writing Month from Christine Gilbert of AlmostFearless.com. Christine has embarked on some exciting new travel projects with her infant in tow and decided she would have to let the site lapse when Ning.com began charging for their community sites. Impulsively, I jumped into the fray.
The next 30-day NaTraWriMo (say that five times) challenge begins in just two short weeks, on October 1, so please head over to the site and join in if you think you might enjoy an exercise in marketing and self-promotion for travel writers.
There has been some interesting scuttlebutt about the folly of asking travel writers to send out 30 pitches in 30 days, and I'll be telling you more about that soon, as I review Tim Leffel's recent book Travel Writing 2.0.
