Living Aboard A Boat Interview With Travel Writer and Author
Living Aboard A Boat Interview With Travel Writer and Author Janet Groene
Today Norm Goldman, Editor of sketchandtravel.com is excited to have as our guest, travel writer and author Janet Groene.
Janet and her husband Gordon have authored several books including:
Living Aboard and Creating Comfort Afloat.
Good day Janet and thanks for agreeing to participate in our interview.
Norm:
Could you tell our readers something about yourself, the books you have authored and what motivates you to write travel books?
Janet:
Since I was very young, words just bubbled out of me and begged to be written down. When I discovered that these words can be turned into money, I was hooked. For the first 10 years of our marriage, my husband flew airplanes for a living and his hours were different every week.
I loved writing ad copy for a department store and later worked for a newspaper, but I turned to freelancing as a way of being home when he was. “Try it as a business for six months,” Gordon suggested, and I did. It was galling at first to get so many rejections. As a salaried writer, I sent my work to the composing room and soon it was in print. Now I was sending out loads of manuscripts and seeing them bounce back within a month or two. I stuck to it as a business, however, and just before the six months were up I sold a poem for $15 followed by a short article for $250. Things became easier after that. In time I realized how much I had learned by subnmitting and being rejected. No writing course can teach what one learns by being in the marketplace.
Norm:
I understand that you and your husband lived on board a 30-foot sailboat for 10, happily homeless years. Please tell our readers why you embarked on such a venture and did you ever tire of living on the boat:
Janet:
On a business trip to the Bahamas we discovered a wrecked sailboat washed up on a lonely beach, and we began to dream the impossible dream. If we went to sea we could be together all day, every day, and, with all our belongings on board a sailboat, we could travel and still be at “home”.