Doing NaBloPoMo in 2022

[collingwest]

In a now-deleted post, I announced that while I still support the premise and idea behind National Novel Writing Month (also known as NaNoWriMo), and while I still support many of their original initiatives, I’m no longer going to be participating. A quick Google search indicates that I’m far from alone in making the decision to dissociate myself in recent years, but doing so left me with a dilemma: what else could I do to keep myself accountable for writing every day?

After looking at several of the other alternatives available, and after an abortive attempt at this year’s Get Your Words Out — my goal was far too ambitious, and I’ve already dropped out of the program — I’ve taken a long look at what I’ve been writing lately. Since the majority of it is actually non-fiction, and since one of my explicit writing goals is to create more content on the web, the answer became clearly fairly quickly: during November 2022, I will be doing National Blog Posting Month.

This is an older challenge that no longer has an official web site, although an unofficial guide still exists. However, the Twitter hashtag is still somewhat active, particularly during November, and the challenge’s content was relatively simple. Writers had to write and post one post blog post (on a single blog) every day in November. The original challenge was apparently fairly strict about allowing writers to pre-write posts before November, or write posts during November to be posted later, but toward the end the rules were relaxed. In that vein, and since it’s a self-chosen and self-administered challenge, I’m going to take the latter option: write one blog post during each day in November. I’m also going to allow myself to do pre-writing activities such as outlining and research prior to November 1.

But this still needs to be a challenge, so I’m not going to write any actual blog posts until November 1, aside of those that strictly belong around my scratch post. To that end, I’ve redone the Scrivener project I use for the Stannum Enterprises posts, and have already started doing some research into both potential topics and potential things to say about those topics. The plan is that by the end of the month, I’ll have enough pre-written material to maintain my twice-a-week posting goal for several months. I’m also hoping to get back into the habit of working on posts every day, and to carry that forward even after the end of November.

I’ll be posting updates here, and linking to them from my own Twitter. Wish me luck!

Originally Posted at https://stannumenterprises.com/2022/doing-nablopomo-in-2022/.

Comments

[zhelana]

Interesting. I've been looking for a writing challenge, too, having likewise decided to give up NaNo. But I already write a blog entry every day, so I'm not really sure what to do. I might give National Poetry Writing Month a chance, even if I'm doing it in the wrong month. Huh.