As 2015 came to a close, many social media sites provide users “Year in Review” type documents. Facebook showed me my year in photos. It is always fun to look back at friends and family. Goodreads showed me the many books that I read in 2015. I exceeded my Reading Challenge Goal, and got to see what all of my friends have been reading. My “to read” list is getting longer by the second, I am afraid.
But then I got my WordPress Year in Review. This was very disappointing to me. Apparently, I have only written seven posts this year. I must apologize for that. There are several reasons for my lack of writing. On the negative side, my life at work has been extremely emotionally draining this year. This leaves me exhausted at the end of the day. I often am left with only the energy to curl up on the couch and play Candy Crush. On the positive side, when I do have energy I have been involved in a lot of fiction writing, which is taking my creative energy away from the blog. This is a good thing! I am trying to nurture my creative side as I get to “a certain age” and find myself thinking of what my next steps in life might be.
If you’ve been reading for quite some time, you may remember that I NaNo’d two years ago. It was the first I had ever heard of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month for those of you who may not know) and I was very excited. While I did not write the requisite 50,000 words, I did indeed write around 10,000. I felt pretty darned good about that.
Then the following year, I tried NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month or something like that) where you vow to write a blog post each day throughout the month of November. This was more successful, and I think I posted 26 posts out of the 30 days.
What I found out doing Nano the first time was that I am totally not prepared to write an actual novel. So I’m bending the extremely flexible Nano rules this time and writing a collection of short stories. This suits my writing style better and I feel I will be much more successful.
I won’t go on and on, but keep your eye on the widget in the sidebar. It should update my wordcount throughout the month. I’ve got 1800 or so words for this first day. Anyone care to join me????
Aimee (who you may or may not hear from for the next 30 days!)
Writing terrifies me. I have always felt the need and desire to write. I have always kept little scraps of thoughts and sentences tucked away in corners of my closet, hidden from view. Words fill my days and nights. They dance off the page when I read and literally make me smile and laugh out loud. The perfectly crafted sentence I see in a piece of literature fills me with awe and drives my need to write. I cannot not write.
It’s the last day of November, and time to take stock of the whole NaBloPoMo experience. I was mostly successful. I just went through my posts and it looks like I managed a total of 24 posts for the month, between my two blogs. Not too shabby for a person who typically posts 2-3 times a month! Here are some things I have discovered over the course of the last 30 days:
Having a given deadline/target/etc. definitely improves my writing habits. While NaBloPoMo is really just an arbitrary “deadline” and there is no real consequence if I did not write, having the “contest” hanging over my head forced me to write.
Feeling the need to write every day did not particularly raise the quality of my writing, however. I had several posts that were just photos or links to videos, and I felt those were cop-out posts. I put them there for the sake of posting something.
When I write more often, I get more ideas. They definitely creep up out of the woodwork. This is good to remember, and hopefully will cause me to post more often in the future.
I got quite a few new followers during November–particularly for my Arbitrary Flights of Fancy blog, which had been languishing in a virtual blogging no-man’s land up until now. But they don’t seem to be particularly active followers. My tried and true followers were the ones who continued to “like” my posts and comment on them. Love you guys!! I do wish to extend a hearty welcome to the newcomers. I hope you stay with me. I promise to make a valiant effort to write more often, keeping an eye to the quality.
I found some great new blogs to read and some new writing communities. Blogher and YeahWrite are communities I hope to stay active in now that November has come to an end.
Today’s post is a pretty darned good one if I do say so myself. It lends itself to discussion, so for heaven’s sake, leave a comment!!!! Check it out at Arbitrary Flights of Fancy. It’s all about words. We’re all writers here…what could be more interesting than words?
Day 4 finds me in a reflective state of mind. Come visit me over at Arbitrary Flights of Fancy and see my safe place. One of the message boards that I participate in has a “safe room”. It’s a great thread where survivors can describe their safe space that they retreat to. It’s full of pillows and fresh outdoorsy places. Come see mine.
Hop on over to my other blog, Arbitrary Flights of Fancy, and see what I’m up to for November this year.
Wish me luck! I will be posting back and forth on both blogs and hopefully I will be able to stick with it and actually post every day on one or the other of the blogs. I’ve got 4 or 5 thoughts. Only 25 more to go. Hopefully, some of you will join me. I’d love to read your posts!
It’s been an incredibly busy week. Busy in a wonderful way, but busy nonetheless. I finally had a chance to go through the 98 emails that were in my inbox and found this clip on Unladylike Musings. It’s slam poetry and this man’s passion and words went right to my heart. I was in tears before it was over. Very powerful stuff.
When I first started this blog a year and a half ago, I had big plans for building a place for rape survivors to connect and share their stories. But in reality I didn’t expect anyone to read what I had to say.
Right away, I got 2 followers. I don’t know who you are, but you were so inspiring to me. Just knowing that someone…anyone…had read something I had written and connected with it was amazing to me. I sat and grinned. Soon I had 5 followers, then 10. I hovered around 10 for quite some time. I was content. More
