The Start of 2023’s National Novel Writing Month
Every November, it is National Novel Writing Month where writers from around the world get together (or stay at home) and try to write at least 50,000 words in a month! I have done this event for several years, with my first year being either in 2015 or 2016.
How about I take a meandering side note and tell you about my laptop — it will not let me open up the taskbar, so I cannot try to connect to the wifi of the tea place where I am currently writing this. And because of that, I cannot connect to the Internet and log into my National Novel Writing Month account to double check when I started writing. I have never won, but I have written over 30,000 words in at least two years, I believe.
Speaking of this tea place, it is called Flying High Tea, and it is located in downtown Lafayette, Indiana. It is quaint and cozy. I am drinking an herbal tea called Sweater Weather, and it is very good! I cannot adequately describe the flavor, but I really enjoy it! I am not usually a tea drinker, but I actually like this one. The theme of Flying High Tea is travel, so there are posters of cities from all across the world around the shop. They also serve food and tea parties.
Back to this year, I will be writing posts for this blog, Meandering Mandy. I will publish them throughout the month and the upcoming months and maybe years, depending on how many posts I write. I guess I could open up my phone and use my phone’s Internet to log into my account, but that would take a lot of work!
For this month, I need to make a plan of what topics and trips I will write about. As you may or may not know, my blog focuses on travelling. I love to write about my trips and journeys, and I also love reading about others’ travels. I enjoy reading memoirs, and I like writing book reviews of the books I read that are related to travel. I also have a subscription box to Universal Yums where I get a box of snacks, candy, chips, and sweets delivered to my home from a different country each month. I call it, Traveling Without Actually Going Anywhere, where I write about mine and my husband’s experiences of tasting new treats from this box.
There are quite a few trips that I have been on within the past year that I have started to write about and haven’t finished, or that I have not started writing about whatsoever. I shall make a list of those trips, not to brag, but to give me a plan of what to write about during this month:
1) Honeymoon in Hawaii
2) Portland, Oregon
3) Road trip to Chicago and Northwest Indiana
4) Denver, Colorado
5) Road trip to Fort Wayne, Indiana and Detroit, Michigan
6) Getaway Cabin in Brown County, Indiana
7) Group trip through EF Ultimate Break to Ireland
8) Labor Day Weekend trip to Cincinnati, Ohio
Okay, so I remembered that I could hit control + alt + delete so I could access my taskbar and other tasks. This means that I am now connected to the Internet! I started writing for NaNoWriMo (this is the nickname for National Novel Writing Month) in 2015. I wrote over 30,000 words in 2015 and 2020.
I look forward to writing about my trips and sharing my adventures with you! I also hope that I can write at least 25,000 words this month. I know that this is only half of the NaNoWriMo goal, but I want to set a realistic goal for myself. If I did not have to work 40 hours a week to sustain myself, I would have no problem aiming for 50,000 words, but alas, I must be realistic! I hope you enjoy reading my blogs, and if you have any suggestions for topics for me to write about, please let me know! Or if you know of any good travel memoirs for me to read, let me know that too! Until next time!
