Road Less Travelled Journal
15+ years
Helping brands tell their stories
Hi, I'm Maureen Murori👋
Writer, storyteller,
Writer, storyteller,
chronic over-thinker. Building ...
Almost a decade ago, I left Kenya to pursue higher education abroad. Since then, I've earned a master's degree, become a wife and mother, published a book—Our Untold Truths—and I'm currently building a life in Cyprus.
Most weekdays, I write fintech content to pay the bills. In whatever time is left, I write essays on lifestyle, travel, and culture, the writing I hope to spend all my energy on, someday soon. I also take on select freelance and ghostwriting work, helping entrepreneurs and business owners find the words that connect their brand to their audience.
400+ essays & articles written
Turning ideas into relatable stories
As seen in: The Culture Trip · Missio München · Maroni Hills · The Exchange
The journey
A few milestones
These are the moments that changed me.
2017
Starting over
I left Kenya to pursue higher education abroad. To support myself, I built an online portfolio of my past writing to put my work in front of the clients I hoped to reach.
✦ Origin story
2018
1st international contract
The portfolio landed me a contract with the Culture Trip, writing on travel and culture. It gave me the confidence to keep going — we all need that kind of boost once in a while. In the pieces, I wrote was about a country I'd later call home, long before I ever moved there.
✦ Recognition
2019
2nd international assignment
I received an email looking for a writer to join a team of journalists and photographers covering the Mediterranean. Talk about being ready, at the right time and place. A German photographer joined me in TRNC for three days to document the assignment. I ended up writing about my own journey, woven with anecdotes from other international students.
✦ The assignment
2020
Change of plans
COVID-19 hijacked my plans to travel to Marseille for the 2019 writing assignment. Stuck at home, with my MA thesis just submitted and over 50 questionnaire responses still fresh in my mind, I sent out a new set of questions — this time to women, friends and family — as a way to stay busy, and to make sense of what we were all living through together. That small act put my first book into motion.
✦ The birth of my first book
2024
Our Untold Truths is born
Four years, several postponements, and a completely different life later — a move to Cyprus, becoming a wife and a mother — I finally got the book, Our Untold Truths, out of my laptop and into the world.
✦ Growth
2025/26
Sharing my life with others
These days, I'm building this space, and Substack too. I host workshops on storytelling and journaling, drawn from the book. I love writing about lifestyle, travel, and culture, and this space exists to capture all of it, including the in-between moments. The kind we don't talk about until we've made it to the other side.
✦ Building the next chapter
What I do
Craft & capabilities
Five years of writing professionally has sharpened a particular set of muscles. Here's where most of the energy goes.
Things I use & love
Writing
📝 Notion
✍️ iA Writer
📖 Ulysses
🖊️ Moleskine
Design & Visual
🎨 Figma
📸 Lightroom
🖼️ Procreate
Reading & Research
📚 Kindle
🔖 Readwise
🗂️ Obsidian
🌐 Pocket
Publishing
✉️ Substack
🌍 Ghost
📊 Fathom
Currently on my shelf
Books that are guiding me
A rotating list of what I'm reading, returning to, and leaning on for perspective right now. This is not a definite list, just what feels true at the moment.
The Artist's Way
✦ Creativity
Read this four times. Changed my relationship with making things each time.
How to Do Nothing
✦ Philosophy
A book about attention and resistance that I wish everyone would read.
Piranesi
✦ Fiction
The most beautiful strange world I've ever been lost in. I never want to leave.
Bird by Bird
✦ Writing
The only writing book you need. Honest, funny, and completely unafraid of the mess.
The Sense of an Ending
✦ Fiction
A slim novel about memory and self-deception that took a week to process.
Hello there!
Let's have a
Let's have a
conversation
Whether you want to talk about a piece I wrote, explore working together,
or just say that something resonated — my inbox is genuinely open.
I read every message, and I reply to most of them.