So, as those of you in the bloggosphere probably know (and with advance apologies to my civilian readers here) November is a special month for bloggers and internet-savvy writers and writers who blog (if there is such a distinction to be made) - it is National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) AND - in response - National Blog Posting Month (or NaBloPoMo); a month where many are committing to writing copious amounts of words EVERY day.*
NaBloPoMo started as a November thing like NaNoWriMo, then the daily blogging part caught on so well that it became a regular monthly thing, and I participated this past July - and yes, wrote a post EVERY day. (See the little "31" next to July 2011 in my archive on the left?)
I enjoyed it, and it was good for my writing; a daily flexing of the muscle and guess what? It gets stronger (duh).
But... but.. it took time. Time that would have / could have been family time. Time that would have / could have been clean up the house time, deal with the mountain of paperwork time. You know the drill.
It was a relief when August came around. But also a bit of a let-down from the writer's high of daily posting. So I thought - November. The BIG month, the uber-NaBloPoMo... I'll do it again then, and planned on it, planted the seed in my brain.
But then October kicked my ass. With my elderly mother's hospitalization and subsequent recovery sucking all the time out of my life, I felt me family needed me. I needed me.
So I decided: I can't do this. As much as I can use my crazy life as excuse to not write, I can also use writing as excuse to neglect parts of my life. Especially the the unpleasant ones: housework, paperwork, etc.
I would be a liar to not admit the chaos factor in our home has increased tenfold since I really became committed to the writing life. Dealing with dust bunnies or crafting a memoir piece... there is NO doubt where my priorities lie. But when the dust bunnies get as large as the sofa? It's a problem.
So I decided to bow out, even prepared a preliminary post called "No Mo" to explain why. It's not that I wasn't going to write, but I was just not going to put the pressure on, make it so I HAD to every day.
But then... but then... so many of my friends were doing one (or BOTH!) of the writing challenges and were talking about it excitedly on their blogs. The Twitter chatter began. And NaBloPoMo's home based moved to BlogHer, MY home base, in so many ways, too.
In short: I started feeling left out. Started feeling resentful of "having" to give up something I had so been looking forward to.
So I signed up. I can still bail at any time during the month if the center just can't hold, if I find Ethan pouting in the evenings, complaining I "love the computer more than you love us!" again.
But the writer in me feels the need to give it the old college try. And I have some tricks up my sleeve.
You may see some very short posts here this month, mere wisps of thought that I would normally save up until I had three or four on a theme to weave into a "good sized and proper" post. But hell, I've noticed many daily posters often go short, so why not me, too.
Also, reading back through my post queue, I have found some very interesting drafts, things half, even three quarters written that I really would love to complete and send out into the world. Some of them I abandoned, even though I really liked them, because I thought they'd lost their "timeliness."
So I'm thinking this is the perfect excuse to resurrect them, make them resurfaced time capsule type things (including one I can call "Lost Tales of BlogHer11"... yeah THAT post that I never finished).
And now I will end this (completely internal-thought-process, welcome-to-my-brain) post with a question...
Should I be doing NaBloPoMo this month and posting daily, or am I nuts to add that pressure to my life right now? I have no clear perspective, I'm opening the floor to opinions. Thanks!
*I think I have just topped myself, with the longest opening sentence in a post of mine EVER - reaffirming my title as Queen of the Run-On-Sentence (with parenthetical clauses).
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