Kia ora,
This week is a more conversational/political update than concrete adventure writing advice.
First: If you’re a New Zealander, remember to vote this weekend! Time to kick this coalition out and bring in people who actually value:
- the environment (and aren’t going to sell off crown land to the highest bidder),
- Real Humans (and not Big Business and AI evangelists),
- arts and writing (instead of defunding our creators),
- indigenous knowledge (it’s not nonsense),
- and the realities that everyday Kiwis face (have you seen how much a 1kg block of tasty cheese costs these days???).
Policy.nz is a great tool for helping you find out the parties’ policies and who aligns with your values (and they don’t use AI to compile their info).
Second: I deleted my @travel.write.edit Facebook and Instagram accounts last week. I’d stopped posted in early 2025 because of Mark Z’s acquiescence to Trump, but with the recent T&C update allowing AI-scraping and training of websites connected to business accounts, I’d had enough. The tech bros don’t just get to steal my copyrighted writing.
In deleting those accounts, I’m worried about how people will be able to find me, but I have a great website with a solid blog, and I have a wonderful network of writers who’ve worked with me who can tell other writers about me. I’m thinking that collaboration and connection will be my theme for 2027.
I want to write more about my thoughts on AI, specifically generative AI in the writing and publishing process, but it’s taking a while for the mental dust to coalesce into a coherent argument. I won’t be using gen AI to help me write it; this is work that I need to do on my own. (That’s going to be one of my big points. Writing = thinking = understanding.)
Third: Let’s end on a positive and celebrate some bloody great adventure writing.
The 2026 Banff Mountain Book Competition winners were announced two weeks ago (I forgot to talk about it last week 😅). More books for the to-read pile! North to the Future looks fantastic, as does Lone Wolf.
The grand prize will be announced Thursday in the Americas/Friday in New Zealand and Australia.
Happy reading!
Cheers
Deborah
PS. For real, go and vote.
📚 What I’m reading
One step at a time, by Shalane Hopkins. I’m almost at the end. What a wild ride! Walking Te Araroa in 2010/11 was not easy!
📅 Availability
Now booking projects for January 2027. Get in touch if you want a sample edit so you can see what editing can do for your story.
✍️ Ways to work with me
Buy Write Great Adventures: 6 methods to bring your readers along for the ride
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