I was just thinking about my first blog. This is going to make me sound old, but do you remember LiveJournal? My first blog was a LiveJournal and all of the posts were just responses to the daily writing prompts that they’d have posted on there. I’m not sure if LiveJournal is even still a thing, or if it is still a thing if those prompts still exist, so this may be totally dating myself, but that’s really the first time I got into writing on a regular basis.
Before that, I journaled a lot, and dabbled in poetry, and I had a couple of short stories and things like that just saved onto my computer, that were not published anywhere. Unfortunately I used an old family computer throughout high school and into the start of college, and when that computer died everything I wrote when I was younger went with it. In college, I admittedly worked too much, and my writing outside of school work was essentially contained in my first Disney blog. Called Destination Disney World, it was a way for me to connect with Disney theme parks outside of message boards and the like between trips, and it was as basic as it sounds.
During college, I started freelancing with Fiverr (which now looking back I have very mixed feelings about…that could be an entirely post in the future if anyone is interested!). From there, I started freelancing for a now-defunct Disney fan site. Then a listicle-type Disney site, and then another, and eventually, another. During the first half of my senior year, I was accepted into the Disney College Program, and almost immediately after I got in touch with the publisher of my first two books, Theme Park Press, who at the time was looking for future interns to write new memoirs for a series they had in the works. I kept a journal during my program that became the book, and that book led to another Disney book, which led to more freelancing with outlets like Theme Park Tourist, Attractions Magazine, WDW Magazine, and more. Today, in addition to having a day job, attempting to write here and Castle Party (which is a rebranded version of Destination Disney…) I’m also the Social Media & Marketing Director for Celebrations Magazine and a staff reporter for Inside the Magic.
Lately I’ve been finding myself torn between being absolutely thrilled that I actually do work as a freelance writer, because as I’m sure any writer will tell you, making money from your writing is basically the dream. There are A LOT of issues that go into working as a freelancer though- again Fiverr is just the tip of that iceberg, I could easily write an entire post on everything that’s wrong with that. But today, outside of some regular clients, most of my work revolves around Disney. And I LOVE Disney, obviously. I still find myself downright honored when I’m contacted by other writers who need a quote by a Disney expert, and I share every new issue of Celebrations not just because it’s part of my job, but because I really am excited about the magazine and can’t wait to show that.
Recently however I’ve been thinking about how different my writing was when I was younger and how it would be nice to get back into some different things. I all too often find myself only writing for work, which again is great, but I really need to get back into it for creativity purposes. Admittedly I don’t quite know how to do that, and I’m sort of feeling like I have the opposite problem that most writers have. In some sense I feel like I’ve over-niched and while I really do love writing about Disney I’m beginning to worry that if I don’t start writing other things soon, I probably never will. Even this kind of blog post where I’m really just rambling is something that I haven’t done in years– I’m not sure how professional this looks (this could honestly probably be in a journal instead…) but it just felt like something I needed to get out there.
Don’t take this to mean that I’m going to stop my Disney writing by any means. I’m excited to continue working for Celebrations and Inside the Magic, and there are actually a couple of new ventures coming from both that I’ll be sharing soon (podcasts, videos… maybe more). But in the meantime, I’m going to primarily share my Disney content on those sites and on Castle Party, and my non-Disney content here, and maybe soon you’ll see some other non-Disney work off this site from me as well.