My husband and I returned from a 9,500-mile road trip not too long ago. We didn’t quite “drop everything and go” but we sure did leave it all behind for the four weeks we were gone. Jobs, friends, and obligations were put on hold while we went in a gigantic loop around the U.S. — from Maryland to Ohio and across the northern states; to Olympic National Forest in northwest Washington; down the west coast and across the south to Georgia; and then straight up back home.

It would take more than just a blog post to describe everything we saw and how it all felt, and to tell the stories of the random crazy things that happened to us, but here is what I can tell you now. Before we left, we told people about our plans and received nothing but encouragement and comments from people who had either done a similar trip in the past — or wished they could do one now. I will strongly encourage you, too: Do it. You will see and experience things that you would likely never see or experience in your hometown or in the places you frequent in your day-to-day life. The United States is huge, let alone the world, and we are blessed in this day and age to have means of travel that people once didn’t even dream of.

If you’re very attached to and enjoy your career, you may find it difficult to leave. But if you’ve got a job that isn’t your career, let alone your life, a car, a tent, and a little money saved is all you need to get started. There will never be a convenient time to take weeks out of your life and do nothing but travel, and you will never have as much money as you “need” to go — so you have to make it happen and work with what you have. In our case, we worked with a small amount of money, a ‘97 Saturn, and borrowed camping equipment.

Here are a few things we did to save money while on the road:

1. Camping is usually cheaper than getting the seediest of motel rooms. If you’re not used to camping, you’ll get used to it quick — after a few times, you’ll be able to set up a tent to quickly that it won’t seem like a chore.

2. Bring along store-bought groceries instead of eating out, and have a small propane-powered stove to cook on. Especially if you travel in the summer, there may be burn bans in effect and you won’t be able to build a fire.

3. Bring along gallons of water to use for drinking, washing dishes, and cleaning.

4. Being clean is a priority for some people (me! me!), but not all campsite have facilities. You can either sponge bath if you’ve got the privacy for it, go out of your way to find campsites that have facilities, or find a truck/travel stop, where you can purchase a shower for about $10.

5. Keep track of your mileage and get oil changes every 3,000 miles while on the road. If you have a regularly maintained vehicle, chances are that it will do fine on a long trip as long as you continue to maintain it.

6. Pick and choose your battles. After paying $25 fees at a few large national parks, we decided to not go to all of the ones on our list because the cost was adding up. Instead, we spent a few extra days visiting with friends and taking drives through states that we weren’t even planning on seeing. Instead of getting a hotel room, treat yourself to a nice meal out instead.

Now, if you want to discover the world while on a budget, see Nora Dunn’s article “Travel full time for less than $14,000 per year” . If this doesn’t inspire you to become the traveler you’ve always dreamed of being, I don’t know what will!

For some pictures from my trip, visit my other blog.

In the past, I have started novels and scrapped them 20 pages in. When you’re aiming for at least 50,000 words in a month, losing that many pages is … well, it’s pretty bad. But I do have until November 1st to come up with something, over a week, so hopefully I can get my creative act together! In addition to updating my personal blog, I will update here as well, to keep all of our fellow story tellers and story lovers in the loop. If you are also a NaNoWriMo participant, you can friend me on their website — I’m squirtt7.

If there are any novel writers out there, what do you come up with first for your novels? What do you build on initially? Characters? One character? The setting, or the plot? The antagonist?

Grief isn’t timely. She conjures up old memories and feelings. Grief causes nostalgia.

On the day I found out he died, I arrived home from work, and walked straight back into my bedroom, to my bookshelf, and found my 12-year-old copy of McCourt’s memoir, “Angela’s Ashes”.

Skipping dinner and changing out of my work clothes, I fell onto my bed, and soaked myself in his story all over again.

How this book came to me? For one of my many middle school book reports, I found Mccourt’s memoir in a best-seller section of a small bookstore. I should mention that I was in love with books as a child. Writing a book report, not to mention going book shopping, was more like a hobby than actual school work.

The way I shopped for books as a prepubescent child is still how I shop for books. It has proven to be the best method.
I walk in, pick up a book and read the first sentence. Then, I flip to the middle of the book and find another sentence. It’s not about whether the action is enthralling. If the voice speaks to me in such a way, I take the book.

For that particular book report, “Angela’s Ashes” called me.

My 12-year-old self read the 460 pages in three days. McCourt’s writing voice had a power over me. Memoirs are now my favorite genre, and if I had to explain it, I’d simply say that the way an author’s mind pours their life memories onto a series of bound pages resonates with me.

Yes, I felt like I knew the man after reading his book.
And yes, the memoir is tragic, elaborating about his impoverished Irish childhood. But from what I understand, he became one of the best teachers in New York.
So, in the end, his character is not tragic.
But I remember my tween self completely encapsulated with his ability to sit through writing a whole book about having and being nothing. Knowing nothing of poverty, I was completely in awe of his ability to endure and share the beauty if it all with me, a simple middle-schooler.

There is a reason his book is still on my bookshelf.

We welcome warmly to our writer ranks Paige Dunn, author of The Holey Chicken Truck, which is featured under Pithy Tales as Mind Sprocket’s newest and most humorous submission. What began for Paige as a typical long-distance drive featuring the “frequent smashed armadillo” turns into a drive that the Mind Sprocket staff wishes we could have been along for in person. She recounts her story, told in a creative and thoughtful narrative, here at Mind Sprocket, where readers can take a drive behind … The Holey Chicken Truck.

“I d-don’t know and I don’t care,” sobbed Jill.

Scrubb saw that she wasn’t quite herself yet and very sensibly offered her a peppermint. He had one too. Presently Jill began to see things in a clearer light.

–From “The Silver Chair” by C.S. Lewis

On a break his mother told us that his biggest frustration at school was that he couldn’t hear.

Oh.

She had been letting us talk to him as if he could hear. She didn’t stop us, “Wait! He can’t hear! Just ignore him!”
Maybe that’s what we were supposed to do. Keep talking to him like he was the rest of us.

She told us how he doesn’t get what he needs at school. “He’s thrown in a classroom with all the other misfits with just one teacher.” Wow, I thought to myself. I’m not trained for this. But really, does a class teach us how to show compassion?

They need individual attention.

Individual love.
Like all children.
Like all humans.

I kept saying his name, tickling his cheek, maybe he could hear the vibrations of my voice.

Some of the greatest composers wrote music even though they were deaf.

This child was still a boy, a child worth loving.

I kept calling his name.

He laughed.

Perfect. Living captured on camera.

Intriguing, though-provoking and occasionally dazzling, The Marching Band Emporium is a personal selection of pieces from the first year of the innovative literary blog of the same name.

Alongside a rich crop of drawings, mini sagas, poetry, short stories and a healthy dose of twisted logic, the curious reader will find the brand-new genre of the Excerpt from Lost Novels, taking you into a world of half-lit scenarios and mesmerising characters from imagined books.

All this, and more, from The Marching Band Emporium.

Grab a copy of a compilation written by this truly talented and insightful author.