The wonderful thing about blogging is that each blog you come across is lovingly looked after and curated by a real-life person who, more often than not, is fascinating, has excellent stories to tell and is generally lovely and friendly. I follow a lot of bloggers (here’s a proper list) and through reading about their lives and their passions (be that travel, food, interior design, fashion, literature, foreign affairs, you name it…) I’ve come to know a lot about them. Through meet-ups I’ve met many of them in person and they’re now good friends of mine. We’re all curious as to how other bloggers work and we can (and do) spend hours discussing it. But we’re digital natives so of course there is also a more digital way to go about learning about each other’s blogging habits = and it’s called a Blog Hop.

Kirst from Kirst Over the World in the photo above invited me to take part in hers, which you can find here, and she answered the same four questions that I have answered below. She then invited three other bloggers to pass on the baton as it were, and I am one of those!

So here are my own answers and a bit of an insight into my blogging style, my upcoming posts and my motivation for blogging.

1. What am I working on/writing?

At the moment I’m working on a blog post about San Sebastián, a small but picturesque seaside town on the north coast of Spain. I spent my 25th birthday there two weekends ago and it was utterly idyllic, you’d imagine it belonged on the Côte d’Azur rather than the Atlantic! Here’s a quick peek into what we got upto. I’m also simultaneously writing a couple of articles on public diplomacy, nation branding and the role of tourism in international relations. International Relations is a subject I studied a bit at university and I’ve been reading some fascinating books on the topic recently. I’ll be attending the One Young World summit again in October (this year it’s in Dublin, last year was Johannesburg), so I’m doing some preparation for that too, looking specifically at intercultural skills and gender equality. It’s good to consider the broader picture, beyond just travelling, and I hope it’ll interest my readers too.

2. How does my work/writing differ from others of its genre?

When writing about travel tips or places I’ve visited, I think it’s difficult to write in a totally unique way. There are a lot of travel writers out there! But I suppose the unique angle that some of my blog posts offer is my experience as a languages graduate who has lived, studied and worked abroad using those languages. Some of my most popular posts, the ones that go ‘viral’ as such, are the advice posts such as ‘8 Steps to Getting a First Class Degree in Modern Languages‘ and ‘My Top 10 Tips for Learning a Language‘. While there’s an abundance of travel bloggers, there are very few linguists with blogs, so I suppose that’s how my writing differs from others. Also, I’d like to think that my writing is like storytelling that echoes my own voice, and only I can write with my own voice.

3. Why do I write what I do?

I started travel blogging two years ago purely as a hobby, with no ambitions to develop a readership or any of that jazz. Now I take it a bit more seriously and try to partner with travel companies I like and tourist boards I respect in order to travel more often, although none of this earns any money mind you! I write about travel because travel is what I enjoy doing most, and I believe it’s had a tremendously positive impact on my life. If, through my blog, I could persuade just a handle of people to try living abroad for a few months, then I’d consider it all worth while, as I know I would have changed their lives forever.

4. How does my writing process work?

I have a looooong list of potential titles for blog posts, so I will never run out of ideas! I then decide when to schedule each post (I always have a rough schedule of my blog posts for the next two months) and then nearer the time I’ll write the post itself. As I also have a full-time day job and never as much free time as I’d like, the writing normally happens on my iPhone on the underground to work or while I’m walking somewhere (which must make me very unpopular with pedestrians!) I usually tidy it up and rewrite parts before publishing the posts, and the fun part is looking through my photos and deciding which ones to use. One aspect of blogging that I love the most is having 100% editorial control – I can write whatever the hell I want without having to conform to a marking scheme (like at school), stick to a specific topic (like at university) or have it reviewed/approved (like at work). In that respect I adore being my own boss! At first it took a while to get used to, but now I love the freedom.

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It’s now my turn to pass on the baton to three of my own favourite bloggers! Definitely check out their websites as they come highly recommended from yours truly.

1. Continental Breakfast Travel

A lover of all things Europe, John is a part-time traveller trying to reach every country on the continent before the age of 30. A self-confessed Central and Eastern Europe fanatic, John spent a year living in Russia and now resides in Düsseldorf. In order to justify spending all his wages on city breaks, he started his travel blog – Continental Breakfast Travel back in March 2013.

2. The Travelista

The Travelista is a female travel blog written by Jess Gibson, a Freelance Travel Writer and Group Editor living in London. Being lucky enough to travel to luxury destinations all over the world for her job, The Travelista Blog documents both the professional and personal travels of Jess in witty, informal and honest blog posts. She is a keen photographer and always packs her posts with original photography from her trips. With a career story that took her from tea girl to luxury travel writer, Jess also writes insightful posts to help aspiring travel bloggers and writers to pursue their dream career and make their mark in the travel industry. The Travelista has been shortlisted in the Most Stylish Travel Blog in the Blogger Awards 2014 and has also shortlisted to win Best Travel Blog in the Cosmopolitan Blog Awards 2013 & 2014.

3. Viaggiovagando

Annalisa Moscatiello likes to define herself as a “citizen of the world” because she has always lived in multicultural environments, and speaking fluent Italian, English, Portuguese and Spanish has been a huge help for travelling and meeting people from all over the world. She’s about to finish her Master Degree in Translation and Interpreting, after have worked in Portugal and have spent a semester in England. Her passion for travel is documented in her blog Viaggiovagando, a word she invented to join “viaggiare” (travelling) and “vagare” (wandering) with her imagination. Her blog is very varied in topics, including events, (vegi) food and curiosities from cultures and people across the globe. Her dream is to visit the long list of Unesco Heritage sites and (why not?) to be a better photographer.