48 States, 50 Days
Hey everyone, I’m still alive and kicking, working on my book and trying to get picked up, along with 3 or 4 more projects, basically doing whatever I can to keep myself occupied. But that’s not the reason for this post.
A few days ago, some fine gentlemen from Europe contacted me through Tumblr asking me if I could give them a shout-out on here. They are going to be flying into NYC from different parts of Europe, and taking a mostly northern route across the US to the Pacific Northwest, and then down to San Francisco. Their journey will last around 4 weeks, and they leave in just about a month. Just from their pre-trip blogging they’ve done I’m pretty sure that they will be putting out some good, original content, and as I’ve stated again and again, I love to see original content get love from Tumblr, especially since it’s usually the reblog mills that get all the attention. So please everyone, follow Tyler, Bud, and Fred along their journey westward across the US. I will be.
blair-the-amazing asked: Is it weird for me to say that I'm proud of you? Obviously, we've never met, nor will we ever meet in the future, but upon reading through this blog and just imagining what you've accomplished, I'm elated to see that somebody else shares my obsession with GOING somewhere. Its a goal of mine to have "The great american roadtrip" before i'm forced to setttle down and live a responsible life. The fact that you did this alone is amazing. youve got some serious guts, just getting in a car and driving literally into the sunset. I sincerely hope that this experience taught you something about yourself and the country you live in. maybe one day ill finally be brave enough to do this. thank you for inspiring me.
Thank you very much!
As corny/cliche as it might sound, right under my own personal growth, and right above making a little skrilla, inspiring people is one of my top objectives in doing something like this. I really think too many people do what life tells them to do; they go to school, go to more school, then get a job and work from 9-5 for the rest of their lives, and the closest they get to adventure is the 5 days they spend in the mountains or the beach every year.
Though obviously doing something like I did this summer isn’t viable for everyone, it’s the message behind it that I hope people adopt. Don’t settle. Take risks in your life, even if it means making some sacrifices, and if I push one person to do something they normally wouldn’t (something that’s self-beneficial of course), then I feel justified in everything I’m doing with my life right now.
Hey everyone, still waiting to hear from my first literary agency, it’s about halfway through the three week wait period, so I haven’t gotten my hopes up yet!
But the real reason I’m making this post is to tease a project that I have been working on the last few days. I don’t want to say too much just yet, but if you’re a fellow traveler and I am aware of your work (Alistair, Sam, Sarah, Ernst), I will be contacting you very soon for something I think would be very awesome! And if you think what I did this summer was interesting, and you have been following some of the other travelers like the ones I listed above, and like what they’ve been doing as well, stay tuned!
Over 2 and a half years (!!!) this dude walked more than 4,000 miles along the entire length of the Amazon River, and went through hardships such as being taken prisoner by a local native tribe.
Whenever this dude writes/publishes the memoir for this, assuming he is a decent writer, it will be one of the most interesting pieces of narrative in the upcoming years.
Query Letter
After a week of being back from my trip, and being extremely lazy while recovering from my trip, I knew that it was about time to get on top of things and start on the next step of this project of mine. So today I refined my query letter, which I wrote the first draft of before I left for the trip.
Touching up the query letter actually took the majority of my day, which you wouldn’t expect since it is only a 1-page document. But it is one of the most important pages an aspiring writer can write, and I needed to make sure it was in tip shape. Arguably the most major thing I had to do to complete the query letter was decide on a subtitle for the book, even though the title and subtitle are obviously subject to change. After about an hour of research and brainstorming, I settled on The Pursuit of America. At first it was A Pursuit of the Heart of America, but that seemed a little long for what I wanted, and the double use of “of” didn’t thrill me, so I changed that to A Pursuit of America, but then thought “a” was too soft, so I changed it to the firmer “the”. So if I have my way, the book would ship as Rambling Man: The Pursuit of America. All the other changes I made in the query letter were just tightening it up in general, and I have to be honest, I like it and I think it is good.
Once I got that done, I sent it off to my first pick of literary agencies. As I mentioned before, it is considered common courtesy to only send your query letter to one literary agency at a time, which is fine but also slows the process down, as I have to wait at the most 3 weeks before I know if they like it. Most literary agencies receive such a high volume of queries that they operate under the “If we like it we’ll get back to you within 3 weeks, if we don’t like it then after 3 weeks you’ll know that we didn’t” system. So now I play the waiting game, though I will be using the time to work on the next step, my book proposal. So all in all, exciting day! The hope is that I won’t have to wait too long to find an agency that wants to see my proposal and represent me. I will definitely keep the Tumblr updated as they come to me.
Ron Workman from wherever I’m from, Coonskin on his 48 in 50 tour, Cory from Godaddy, NamelessTed going in the pool, John from Natural Selection 2, Belisle from Golgotron, Bjorn from dude sleeps all damn day, and Josh who is a red headed Jew which defies logic.
Sometimes you just have to take the day off and shoot the shit with friends. In Phoenix, Arizona.
(via ronworkman)
The Arizona Sunset
Chinatown, San Francisco
Golden Gate Bridge
View somewhere in between southeast Oregon and Northeast California.
