It’s that time of year! Consider yourself fairly warned!
This is nothing new for those of you who have followed me for a while, but for those of you who are new to my annual November habit, get ready for an awesome exercise in writing. I do this every year!
Starting tomorrow November 1st, I shall be stepping up my game and madly striving to write 30 posts in 30 days for the annual #NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) November Challenge. But admittedly I don’t do it quite like the bare minimum rules. I actually try to make every single post count.
I’m registered, got my badge up, I’m ready to go.
The first week is usually easy enough, the second week not too bad, come Thanksgiving and well we’re all scrambling to make our daily deadline. “Excuse me dear child of mine… you volunteered me for what at the school Thanksgiving Feast??” There’s always more to deal with than initially imagined.
Last year, I flat-out lost the challenge on Thanksgiving Day. And for the first time ever, I lost it big time. We cooked all day, spent Thanksgiving dinner with family and did not get back home before midnight in time for me to post for the day. So that was only one day, but then with the move and us packing, everything fell apart after that and alas I didn’t get in another post for the 2012 challenge.
SO! This year will be different! I will win the goal!
Cheer me on? Please? 
Good content, bad content, doesn’t matter for NaBloPoMo. Though I do promise you, personally – I don’t like to write throw-away posts. I view my blog as a writing exercise opportunity, not a blather box. So though it’s not supposed to be part of the challenge, I will try to maintain my quality and the interest my pieces have. And I like to experiment with different styles.
The NaBloPoMo challenge is, in a nutshell, all about making the commitment to sit down, to write and to publish every day, minimum one blog post a day, pushing our writing skills to the max and without exception! Even when all our ideas are dried up! Even though we have jobs. Even though we have kids. Even though we get sick. Even though our Thanksgiving turkey blows up. Whatever! Can ya do it?
Think it’s easy? Let’s see you try. Join us over at NaBloPoMo.
Why do I participate in this madness every single year? Well, I happen to enjoy writing, but this haiku probably explains it best.
Anyone else?
Leave a comment in this post along with a link to your blog (and brief description) if you’re participating so we can support each other and even so non-participators can cheer us on! (We’ll need it closer we get to the end of the month, trust me!)
Supporters, post your cheers and websites liberally in the comments as well!
BlogHer took over the management of this challenge/contest (yes, there are even prizes) a couple of years ago, so the entry process is a little different from what you might remember if it’s been awhile since you participated. Be sure to read the links below if you want to get involved. It’s free!
The NaBloPoMo main front page here: http://www.blogher.com/blogher-topics/blogging-social-media/nablopomo
This year’s details here: http://www.blogher.com/novembers-nablopomo-here
Badge Here: http://www.blogher.com/nablopomo-november-2013-badges
Good luck everyone!
Go ahead and click a link below to “share this.” You know you want to! : )
Crochet Liberation Front:
Aberrant Crochet (TM) 
Not a blogger, but I will cheer you on and look forward to each new day’s post!
Thank you Doug! 😀
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Why is it always November? This is my 5th year doing NaNoWriMo, so that’s quite enough of a writing challenge for me 🙂 If I manage to blog at all it will be an achievement, but I’ll be cheering you on 🙂
There’s also Wovember here, which is a woolly treat and I would like to manage to make some felted footwear for the WAL:
http://wovember.com/2013/10/27/the-wovember-wal/
Well, NaBloPoMo started out in just November as a blogger’s answer to NaNoWriMo. Later, they expanded into allowing people to take the challenge on during any month of the year, but November is still the real tradition with anyone who was involved in earlier years. I started participating in NaBloPoMo as a way to warm up to some day doing NaNoWriMo, you know – after the kids’ schedules aren’t so demanding on me. But it can be a challenge to come up with new newsworthy posts every single day. Which is a bit different from immersion in a single book concept. Both challenging, but definitely different in nature.
That’s cool about your Wovember event! I think it’s interesting that challenging ourselves in November like this seems more natural than in January, i.e. new Year’s Resolutions. 🙂
Well, doing nano certainly perks up my November which used to be such a dreary month. Too early for Christmas, my birthday in late October done with, and the weather getting darker and grimmer. What better occupation than curling up with a bunch imaginary people and immersing myself in a pretend world where I am in almost total control 🙂 Yes, I think NaNovember is now my favourite month of the year!
Hey – my birthday is in late October too! 😀 Happy Birthday to us then! And I sooooo share your feeling about November. 🙂
Hi Julia!
We’ll be here in Syracuse, NY, cheering you on and looking forward
to your daily posts. Do you get extra points in the contest if we
post interesting comments to your daily blog???
Gina
Thanks Gina!
Metaphorically – yes I could say I get extra points! Because my day gets brighter and I’m more encouraged to finish the marathon! 😀
Reality? No, not from NaBloPoMo. But I’m entered in a chance to win some tech thing.
Way back, fellow #NaBloPoMo participants would often donate prizes and such (raffled off from the pool of those who accomplished the challenge) to help encourage bloggers to keep going and to reward those who stuck with it and made it to the finish line. After Blogher took over, they don’t do that anymore. Which is kind of sad, but I get that it’s hard to oversee.
But hey, what I do like to do for readers, is invite you to include your web links in your comments. I monitor all entries so spam doesn’t get through. But legitimate people in the community like you – I want you to get found too. Because it’s hard to be a community when you can’t find each other. So yeah – post really interesting comments and include your link, because I want to include you in my internet circle and so do others. 🙂
Woo hoo! You got me excited! This is the first year I’m participating and hopefully I can keep up. We can schedule posts so that’ll make it easier? Anyway, Good Luck!
Hi Nora! Thanks for visiting! Best of luck to us both! 😀
Well, to answer your question, you can schedule posts only as long as you are writing the entire blog post (and posting) every day. “Banking” your posts is not allowed. So it is different than NaNoWriMo in that you can’t skip a day of writing and posting. Though you can make a general outline plan of prompts for yourself.
So between midnight to midnight wherever you live, you need to write and post an entire blog post every day for 30 days. That’s the challenge.
Now, they have changed the challenge to include posting photos – that’s a newer thing to kind of incorporate the photo bloggers out there. But I do this to write, so I hold myself to the writing standard.
Obviously, it’s an honor thing, so you want to hold yourself to whatever standard makes sense for your blog. BlogHer and traditional NaBloPoMo has always restricted anything specifically “for profit” though, so posts can’t be sales ad kind of posts either.
But other than that, there’s no theme or anything to worry about. Like NaNoWriMo, it’s not about quality as much as it’s about just doing it, making the commitment that you will sit down and write/post every single day.
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