When the Cheshire emerges...

The time you spend on overseas trips should be amazing. It's a time where you forget about everything you know and just roll with what you want to see and do.
(Okay, you can't forget your bankcard details and how to say 'hello, how are you' in any given language...)

Writing for a living now, I expected that a three-week holiday wouldn't present any problems in keeping up to date with my thoughts. The two weeks in New Zealand particularly were meant to be very relaxed.

But as I discovered once again, I'm notorious for not being able to keep up to speed.

Edinburgh, 2011

In New Zealand and on my European trips, I loved sitting in a cafe and just wiling away a couple of hours over decent sweets and processing my recent experiences. Sitting in JK Rowling's seat at The Elephant House writing as she did for Harry Potter was pretty awe-inspiring to say the least.

But all in all, my European travels were bad. For trip one (2010) I wrote about 30,000 words after coming home, which I think took the better part of two weeks, or months maybe. Trip two last year is even worse. Yes, IS.

I'm still trying to recount events.

From as early as April when I left. IT'S APRIL AGAIN NOW. Let's just say I've had a huge weight on my shoulders for some time.

Queenstown, 2012

Back on New Zealand, I had too good a time to be writing to myself every night. It was more chilled overall but I still wandered around places more than expected. So instead of writing a blog for my lovely readers last night (whoever you may be, make yourselves known one day and say hi :D ), I focused on finishing the latest thing that I'd started. And at 11:58pm I was DONE.

A massive wave of relief came over me, as well as a blistered finger and cramped arm. Yes, I hand-wrote it all. And that was only for a three-week trip.

I've been working on and off on collecting Europe 2011 thoughts for some time, but with this achievement (and a welcome change in working hours) I think I'm on a roll. The sense of achievement I'll feel when this is done will be UN.BE.LEIVE.A.BLE, because I AM going to do it.

DO you have a bad record with diary entries on holidays? I feel like I'm the worst in the world so I'd love to hear what anyone thinks!