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*

NaBloPoMo vs NaNoWriMo

NaBloPoMo vs NaNoWriMo. What the what?

Allow me to translate.

National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short, is a marathon to write a 50,000 word novel in November. Sounds oh so simple but oh so demanding on time! Seeing as I have a couple of ideas for novels floating around in my head, and I LOVE writing, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to get one of these ideas, or more likely a mishmash of some of them, down in black and white, thereby facilitating my meteroric rise to fame as an accomplished contemporary writer. Aaand back in the room!

I have only just heard of NaBloPoMo thanks to BritMums and this post. National Blog Posting Month is a challenge to write a post every day through November. Now that sounds a little more acheivable especially considering normal family life, need for sleep and a few other commitments in November. But actually it is sometimes really hard to find your blogging inspiration, she says writing a post about writing a post a day!

I am in desperate need to get writing, proper words that tell a tale and get my imagination spinning off in various directions but hopefully getting somewhere in the process. So my challenge is this. Do I try to write 50,000 words in the form of a novel or do I try to write a blog post a day or do I write a novel on my blog in 30 posts hopefully hitting about 50,000 words in total? Or do I wish everyone luck who is attempting one or other of these writing challenges and sit back and read the fruits of their labour?

No pressure or anything (on October 31st)!

Did you consider one of these challenges? Did you decide it wasn't for you or are you going for it? Obviously I understand that you may be a bit tied up writing if you are!