Wednesday 30 November 2011

NaBloPoMo - The Conclusion



I definitely made the right decision when I chose NaBloPoMo rather than NaNoWriMo.

Could I have written 1500 words a day that could be considered literature?
Would my family have moved out in the search for food?
Would my fingers be reduced to bleeding stumps?
Would my eyes be bloodshot and out on stalks?

In answer to the above, no, yes, yes, yes.
And would I have a novel that I was proud of? A categorical NO.

Instead I joined in with Britmums NaBloPoMo (or Write a blog post every single day through November whilst trying to gain new readers whilst hanging on to the ones you've got). This required on average 321 words per day taking about 40 minutes to write, 1 awesomely edited photo a day *cough* requiring 30 minutes on Picnik, and add to that time to read other blogs and comment.

The writing was easy (thanks to a couple of timely memes to fill in a couple of gaping holes in my otherwise fun packed blogging calendar) but the hard part for me was giving enough time to other people's posts and giving them the comment love that I wanted to give. My comments became more meagre and uninspiring as the month went on but I did comment whenever I could. I know for those of you who are stat-aholics, a comment is a comment and counts for your rankings, but I am not as sensitive to my stats. Don't get me wrong, I look at my page views, I am disappointed if I don't get any comments, I worry if no one visits my blog and I plug my posts all over twitter and facebook. I write for pleasure, but I also write for recognition and for appreciation. I am a blogger but I am also a person *wibble*, which is why I like to give something back in my comments if I can, it is just an extension of my writing after all.

I could have spent more time on the writing, at times it was just pushed out rather than considered, there wasn't much time to actually do anything to write about either, which has led me to the conclusion that I shouldn't try to write a post a day from now on. Keep it natural and when the writing inspiration hits, I am poised and ready at the keyboard (life permitting, those little people may get in the way on occasion).

You will glad to hear that I am not going to be force feeding you through December, there will be enough of that in the form of mince pies and chocolate (I hope), but what I do feed you will be high quality, refined and heartfelt. At least I'll try ;)

Thank you for sticking with me. Normal service will soon be resumed. By normal I refer you to the last sentence of the previous paragraph. Any other interpretation of the word 'normal' is unintentional.

NaBloPoMo, I bid you goodnight.

*dashes off to think about tomorrow's post*
*hah, I don't need to now, do I?*
*but I may want to, it being December and the run up to Christmas, and all*
*oh poppycock (heavy emphasis on last syllable) where did I hide the advent calendars*
*rummages in cupboard* *drags out sorry looking supermarket advent calendars* *calculates time available to hand craft something more blog worthy*

*head desk*




6 comments:

  1. well done,

    I have watched in amazement as some really strong writers have produced post after post, day after day, as an avid reader I have loved it and will miss the regular updates in December.

    Maybe you should carry on?

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  2. Well done! I managed the whole month posting, but failed miserably to comment on everyone else's posts :-(

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  3. I also feel burned out by it all and I thoroughly enjoyed falling asleep on the sofa tonight without worrying about writing a post. I will, however, miss all the many updates from other bloggers that have kept me well entertained! My magazines were collecting dust on my bedside table as I had so much to read...now, Vogue, back to us...

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  4. we too have shop bought advent calendars for the first time...

    Ditto to the comment love but please do force feed me mince pies - we need a reward for all this effort!

    looking forward to 'normal' service x

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  5. I feel i wasnt good at visiting lots of blogs to post my support i did try but it was hard to find the time for everything! I enjoyed it though and have already written a post for tomorrow - 3o a month habit is hard to break ;)
    Well done c

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  6. I do feel I haven't been able to give other bloggers as much attention but look forward to catching up now.

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Oooh, I do like a good comment :-)