Rewriting, Travelling … not Blogging

The Echidna and the Fox has been idle, partly because I’ve been busy rewriting Daughter of Independence. Max Barry (link here) says:

Rewriting. It’s like writing, only with less visible progress. With writing, you can feel reasonably assured that what you put on the page is better than what was there before. Not always! But mostly. Rewriting, though, you can spend a good six hours on a scene, sit back, and think, “Yep… that’s worse.”

I’ve also had a period of not writing at all, during which a friend and I travelled through Cambodia. Coming up soon will be posts prompted by the journey. We enjoyed being in the country and meeting Cambodians and other travellers, and I’d like to tell you about our time in a community-based ecotourism project in the Cardamom Mountains. But for me the journey also raised many questions. The country is awash with both tourists (that is, us) and Non-government Organisations, and I began to think about the role of Westerners. How can we make sure that what we do is of real benefit?

I look forward to sharing with you our experiences and our questions about how the rest of the world can best support Cambodians as they create better lives in their beautiful country.