A story worth telling
Why we’re writing a book
When we started our journey throughout New Zealand we had no intention of writing anything about it other than personal journal entries. In fact, I wanted to distance myself from writing as much as possible because it had been my job for the past three years and I needed a break. Like really needed a break. This is why we didn’t write a blog, although Ben did post photos every few weeks to keep our friends and family happy. Check them out here.
Something changed along the way. We had seen so many beautiful places, met so many interesting people and had so many bizarre experiences, and one day it just clicked — we had to write something. We didn’t know what, but we knew that we had to preserve these stories somewhere other than our unreliable memories. The more we talked about it, the more sense it made for us to have a crack at a book. I don’t know why, but every time something funny or frustrating happened we would joke about how we’d write about it “in the book”. It was kind of sarcastic, but tell yourself something enough and you’ll start to believe it.
So, why is our story worth telling? This is a question that I never really considered until the journey was over. We wanted to write something for ourselves. Exploring New Zealand the way we did was the best thing I’ve ever done and I’m pretty sure the same goes for Ben. We wanted to document those experiences, treasure them for life. Writing them down seemed like the logical way to do that.
So number one, our story’s worth telling because it’s important to us. If no one other than the two of us, our families and a few friends read it, then that’s fine. It will be satisfying to have written and published a book and to have those stories as a souvenir. It will be something we’ll both read over in years to come, something to show the grandkids.
The second reason we’re telling our story is that we’re pretty sure other people will find it interesting, too. Wouldn’t that be a bonus? Now I know there’s every chance that our experiences are far more interesting to us than they will be to anyone else. That’s usually the case. But that’s a risk we’re quite happy to take because, first and foremast, we’re writing for ourselves. (There’s actually a really cool post on Medium about this: Don’t write for others; write for yourself).
The thing that has been encouraging for me is that a lot of people I’ve spoken to, both along the journey and afterwards, have been genuinely interested in our story. They maybe don’t care so much about all of the details, but they’ve all wanted to know more. Most of all they wanted to know why. Our answer was always the same: we wanted to see our own country before going overseas again. It was a simple idea that seemed to really resonate with people. “Yeah, it’s all right here in our own backyard,” they would say. I think these conversations caused people to stop and think about how special New Zealand really is. In a sense, we were asking the question — why don’t more people explore their own country before jetting off around the world? It strikes at the heart of the Kiwi spirit, our pride in these beautiful little islands that we call home. That’s a story worth telling, I reckon.
– Jonathan
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