What is interesting?

That question is the key to my writing. It’s key to the arts, but most writers don’t ask that.

Most writers scope their piece beforehand, without looking what’s inside. A travel blog might separate their posts by time (a day, week, etc.) or location (country, city, restaurant), which makes writing hard. Not everything about travel is interesting, but you feel that writing everything about the time or location is appropriate—like filling in a colouring book and stopping whenever it feels right.

Instead, I start with an interesting idea, explore it and listen to how to pieces fit. It isn’t me that’s in control, I’m listening, so I don’t know what it’ll become until it’s finished. It’s fun and scary. My body was literally shaking when I posted my first real piece on Facebook. I had no idea what reaction I’d get, but it felt right.

The process was inspired by...

Making a blog platform was supposed to be easy.

But making high quality things is always hard work. I mean… Medium spent a month perfecting link underlines. Here’s the highlights of my design.

Backstory

Travel Captions is version 2.0 of my writing on Facebook. As I explained in the first post:

Last year, I posted photos on Facebook of my Japan trip. People asked me for photos, but photos alone could never capture my experience. There’s a lack of depth that almost antithesizes my vision of travel, so I posted photos with stories.

Facebook was best at showing photos on all platforms, while allowing people to read. I didn’t want to compromise that. After the success on Facebook, I built my own platform, which had to be better and and that’s a challenge in itself.

Photo

I wanted one photo to be as prominent as possible. Only one photo, so there’s no visual competition. One way to do...