Where Do You Find the Spark to Follow your Dreams?

 

I am grateful to everyone who has supported We Said Go Travel. Three times a year since January 2013, I have run travel writing competitions. This year we transformed into the We Said Go Travel Award.

From the day I invented this idea, everyone has been encouraging! Amazing writers have participated as judges and contestants. My team has grown to support the thousands of writers who have been published on my site. I feel fortunate that you have all shown up.

Lisa Niver from We Said Go Travel Ceramic Bowls made in Santa Monica
I wanted to share my ceramics. Here are four bowls before the glaze firing. See the next photo for their transformation. Lisa Niver

For the 2016 Gratitude We Said Go Travel Writing Award:

The theme is where did you find the spark to follow your dreams?

Seth Godin says “The self starter creates a spark, turning nothing, or what certainly appears to everyone else as nothing, into something. The self starter doesn’t see it that way. That ‘nothingness’ was actually an opportunity, a chance to make a connection, to do something a little better than the status quo, to get things moving.

When you look at a blank page which you turn into magic with your words, where did that begin for you? What place began your love of travel? Or your love of writing? What place are you most grateful for? Is there one location that changed your life?

The Fall Award will open on September 11, 2016 and close on Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 2016 at midnight PST.

I am grateful to Konark, India and the International Sand Art Festival for inspiring me to start this contest.

Lisa Niver from We Said Go Travel Ceramic Bowls made in Santa Monica
Here are the same four bowls after the glaze firing. Sometimes we do not know what is around the next corner! Keep going! Lisa Niver

And if you are not sure what to write or if you are doing it right, remember the words from “Try Everything” from Zootopia:

I messed up tonight

I lost another fight

I still mess up but I’ll just start again

I keep falling down

I keep on hitting the ground

I always get up now to see what’s next

Birds don’t just fly

They fall down and get up

Nobody learns without getting it wrong

I won’t give up, no I won’t give in

Till I reach the end

And then I’ll start again

Though I’m on the lead

I wanna try everything

I wanna try even though I could fail

I won’t give up, no I won’t give in

Till I reach the end

And then I’ll start again

No I won’t leave

I wanna try everything

I wanna try even though I could fail

  Lisa Niver's Ceramic Art: Where Do you Find the Spark?Lisa Niver's Ceramic Art: Where Do you Find the Spark?

Lisa Ellen Niver

Lisa Niver is an award-winning travel expert who has explored 102 countries on six continents. This University of Pennsylvania graduate sailed across the seas for seven years with Princess Cruises, Royal Caribbean, and Renaissance Cruises and spent three years backpacking across Asia. Discover her articles in publications from AARP: The Magazine and AAA Explorer to WIRED and Wharton Magazine, as well as her site WeSaidGoTravel. On her award nominated global podcast, Make Your Own Map, Niver has interviewed Deepak Chopra, Olympic medalists, and numerous bestselling authors, and as a journalist has been invited to both the Oscars and the United Nations. For her print and digital stories as well as her television segments, she has been awarded three Southern California Journalism Awards and two National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards and been a finalist twenty-two times. Named a #3 travel influencer for 2023, Niver talks travel on broadcast television at KTLA TV Los Angeles, her YouTube channel with over 2 million views, and in her memoir, Brave-ish, One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless After Fifty.

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