Posts from — March 2009

I’ve signed up for National Travel Writing month! This is quite a challenge, but the perfect way to kick start my attempt at passing myself off as a travel writer.

What is it?
National Travel Writing Month was created last year by Christine from the excellent Almost Fearless blog. The premise is to send 30 pitches in 30 days, this means sending query letters to editors to get them to commission writing from you. The aim is to get your work published, so you need to put yourself out there for the writing positions which will get you published and put money in your pocket, and published author credentials on your CV. The idea comes from National Novel Writing Month which occurs every November - I did contemplate doing that, but fiction really isn’t my thing at the moment.

Community
This time the site runs on the Ning social networking platform so there will be a lot of interaction and community encouragement throughout the challenge. I’m also assisting by running a twitter account to motivate and showcase the event.

Go For It
If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, you can sign up at www.nationaltravelwritingmonth.com - at the very least you can encourage me along the way. I’ve got my Blues Tour at at the end of April to the beginning of May so hope to have plenty of things to write about along the way.

I’m off to brainstorm article ideas…

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I want to give a very quick introduction to my upcoming trip, currently codenamed ‘The Blues Tour’ - I’m sure I’ll come up with a better name at some point in the future.

The Trip
My dad turns 60 in March. To celebrate, he, my brother and I are doing a blues tour from Austin, TX to Chicago, IL. It’s a tight schedule packing in quite a distance in just two weeks.

Planning
We still have planning to do, but I’ve very excited. We’ll be taking in as many blues roots destinations as we can along the way, mainly:

• Austin
• Memphis
• Clarksdale
• Jackson
• Nashville
• Chicago

Image by handword

The route will follow (loosly), the old Route 61 which is the blues highway from New Orlean to Chicago. Famous sites include the Crossroads in Clarksdale where legend has it that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil to become a great guitarist. We also plan to visit the Gibson guitar factory (Nashville) and maybe even the Jack Daniels factory for a bit of Rock and Roll.

Road Trip
Road trips are something of a tradition in America so it seems, and I think we have great ingredients for a fantastic trip. I plan to blog and tweet along the way and hopefully do some good depth of writing on the experiences along the way.

More to follow on our plans, but if you have any tips to share please do let me know!

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