Becky McCray, good friend as well as a founding partner of Tourism Currents (of which I am a part) wrote this in an email ~

“Back in the day, a blog meme or a blog hop was a way of connecting different writers together to each offer their own take on a single topic, each on their own blog.”  Becky McCray

Des Walsh from Australia tagged Becky in a blog hop with the theme “Why I Write.”  She has since written her answer here and has listed others who have participated. She then tagged me along with Jon Swanson and Linda Crimm, aka Miss Dazey, to share . I’d never heard of this concept and I’ve never really thought much about “the why.”

Wow –  it’s simple why I write

My mom Jean, gave me the writing gene!

I took a couple of days to ponder why exactly I write and it’s not a deep, introspective answer as you’ll see, but it is the truth.  As Becky pointed out in her initial email, I rarely get to write for myself as I’m always writing for others.  But so much of that is why I write.  I love being able to give a voice to those who have trouble writing about what they’re doing.   Writing has always come easy to me.  My mom was a successful radio advertising copy writer in the 1950’s.  She gave that up to raise our family.  She instilled her love of writing in me.  So many can’t express themselves via the written word, and I’m happy to do that for them.

Mr. Livingston, my 4^th grade teacher encouraged my writing and creativity.  He understood that I had to write things down because if I didn’t I wouldn’t be able to express myself well.   There were just too many thoughts going through my head at any given time and I couldn’t spit them all out.  By junior high it was a done deal. I knew I was going to be a writer, I just never thought that tourism, destination marketing and small business would be the focus of my writing.  I thought I was going to write Harlequin romance novels – but that’s another story.

Math makes me cry, writing makes me happy

Another reason why I write – well, I’m terrible at math!  It goes back to writing being easy, and I took the easy road.  A road that makes me happy.   Happiness, that’s really why I write.  I make people happy by writing for them and that makes me happy.  I’ve been accused many times of being happy all the time.  Well, when you do what you love, how can you not be?

Now I’m tagging the following 3 people to enlighten us, keep this blog hop hopping, and let us know why they write:

Joe Cheray who can be found at http://wildheartsocialmedia.com/

Jane Boyd who is the founder of 45 Conversations

Paul O’Mahoney who is a brand sociologist and CEO of Change Agents