My friend who works as a translator (Icelandic - English) and editor was nice enough to edit the blog for me. I also offered to pay her (because of course, this is her job), but she did not want me to, because she is a super nice person. I invited her to a beer instead. She did a great job, though could not keep herself from injecting some sass into her comments.

She was confused by some of my more German English:

Whut? Is this a German idiom? I don‘t get it.

I think... I don‘t know what you mean by this really.

I also seem to be making up words

This isn‘t a standard word. What is this meant to mean? People who own yachts?


This is not a word. I don’t really know what you mean?

Sometimes I capitalise, sometimes I don't

You should be consistent.

Consistency!

Shouldn't I know that, being German and all

No c in Bismarck?

Sometimes all she could comment was:

What?

I thought I would just take my old blog posts and clean them up a little, add some stuff and voila - a book.

Then I noticed:

• My entries are sometimes in past tense, sometimes in present tense, depending how long after the experience I had written the post.


• Sometimes the post was in first-person voice, sometimes third. Sometimes I was addressing the readers, other times not.


• A lot of posts had pictures in between "Look how pretty:(picture)".


• There were no transitions between posts, they just jumped from place A to B to the next.

In the end I had to completely rewrite almost every post and add a lot of descriptions and transitions. Hence the book it not being done yet.

The last two years I have been working on a book about my travels along the Panamerican Highway.

Here is why:

1. I really wasn't impressed with the book I read before travelling. It wasn't more informative or adventurous than any Lonely Planet guide. So I thought: "Hey, if that is the level, I can do that!" Mediocrity as motivation.


2. Travelling as a single female traveller is not a big deal. This needs to be pointed out more. The Lonely Planet (I love bitching about it) for example sees female travellers as a subspecies of the "default" traveller and poses their advice in a special section and not under "dangers and annoyances".


3. I was already writing a blog about my travels, combining all the posts into a book should be easy, I thought. I was wrong, I will explain how in part two.