No novels here

Today is the first day of NaNoWriMo, which is probably already familiar to everybody who reads blogs as "National Novel Writing Month," the time of year (the entire month of November, actually) in which people challenge themselves to write an entire novel in just 30 days. I did it the second year – or started to, then lost steam and gave up. The pages of that novel are still out there on the net somewhere, lost in the NaNoWriMo blog I started and then abandoned and have now forgotten even the name of.

Whatever. I've always been a writer but never thought of myself as a novelist, or wanted to be one. I'm definitely not a poet, or a journalist (though I have written lots of poems and articles). I like the sound of the word "diarist" – it feels so kind of nineteenth-century, like I'd be wearing a high-necked brown wool dress and writing with a quill pen (or even a pencil! My mom has the hand-written diary of my great, great, great (etc.) grandmother, which is written in pencil in a small soft-covered notebook) – but can't really call this a diary, since it lacks so much of the private detail I expect from that kind of writing. Also, I can't stand the word "blogger," even though it's the name of the service I use to post this ... thing ... this blog, if that's what it really is. I guess that's what it is.

Anyway, all this is just leading up to an announcement that while I will not be participating in NaNoWriMo this year, I have decided to accept the challenge from Eden over at Fussy and participate in the first annual NaBloPloMo – National Blog Posting Month. All you have to do is post something every day for a month.

No matter what you post - pictures, poems, observations, critiques, or bald-faced lies -- the hope is that the act of putting something of yourself out for the world to see every single day will make writing become a more fluid, natural, and integral part of your day.

A personal blog is a mirror, and just for one month you'll be able to capture an image of yourself every day while creating a time capsule of the good, the bad, and that time you pissed off your mom by updating your blob during Thanksgiving dinner.

Plus, think how happy your regular readers will be, knowing they can get a reliable dose of your brilliance thirty days in a row. That means weekends, too, my friend. Read more.

I've been writing almost every day for at least 30 years already, so the writing part is going to be no sweat. It's the "putting something of yourself out for the world to see every single day" part that I think will be a good challenge for me. I need to do more of that, not just online but in my "non-virtual" life. And actually I've been making some nice progress in that area already, which will give me something to write about if I get stuck for topics later on in the month.

So! The NaBloPoMo page offers these buttons for people to use on their blogs, to let people know about the project. One of them has a gun (um, no) and the other one has Yoda (um .... well, no), and the others are all small, like this:



I haven't decided yet if I'm going to be using any of the buttons, making my own, or going without. But I will be writing here every day this month. Something to look forward to, eh?