Because I was out gallivanting with my now ex-hubby (since we are now divorced over FaceBook) as an early birthday celebration for him, I was not able to start NaNoWriMo as efficiently as I was able to start NaBloPoMo. I promised myself I would write when I got home but I was too stuffed with chinese food to think clearly for my story. I’m sure I could have written at least a thousand words had I actually decided to just write.
Or maybe I couldn’t have.
I’ll never know.
What I do know is that I was about to be on target for what they recommend the word count should be for day 2. I’m at 3,400 words on the dot and I couldn’t be happier about that. I will say that the first thousand words were the hardest to write. The middle thousand were the easiest but the final 800 I would likely not have done if I hadn’t had Zarishi tweeting that I needed to lead by example.
So I begged and now I’m an example.
In some ways, NaNoWriMo can almost me easier than NaBloPoMo.
Did I really just write that? But let’s think about it for a moment.
With NaNoWriMo, you start the month hopefully with the idea for your novel already in your head. The point is that you need to bang out 50,000 words of that story. Starting is always tough because you inevitably procrastinate. I believe many get some of their best writing done on the final week, when its crunch time and we realize we’ve only done half the word count in 3 weeks and have to do the other half in a week.
That’s what happened to me last year.
But that proves my point.
There’s a recommended word count quota to help writers finish their 50k words in the alloted time by doing a little every day. But you don’t have to do it everyday. You can write as little or as much as you feel like it as long as by the end of the month you have the fifty grand in words. And even if you had reached the end of your plotline, you can always go back and edit or add more content or descriptions to give you the final push over the limit.
Now, NaBloPoMo expects consistency from it’s participants. You need to find time in what feels like an already full and busy schedule to write on your blog. Some days are easier than others. Some people have fuller visions as to who they are and what their blog is about. It has taken me years to realize that my blog is just an eclectic view of my life and not just some recipe blog… or a fashion blog… or a blog-type diary. So for me, it may be a little easier to pull out random topics and have it still fit the general topics and themes of my blog.
Not everyone is so lucky.
Plus there are just some days that are boring or we have writer’s block. Having to come up with 30 days of material is not the easiest thing to do if it’s just you, yourself and tu that has to do it.
When I extolled the virtues of wordpress and how it made doing NaBloPoMo easy, I forgot to mention another site and service that I use to help get my blogging entries flowing out.
Essentially it’s a site that will provide you with snippets of inspiration or “prompts” as they call it. These prompts can vary to open ended questions, writing challenges or asking you to share a story or memory about yourself. They even have a link with Flickr to help you find a great random picture to fit in with your entry or you can upload a picture you already have.
But what does this have to do with blogging for NaBloPoMo?
All you have to do is sign up to the site and link your blog to your account. During the sign up they have the instructions for it and it’s really as simple as typing in some info and clicking a couple buttons. Then, whenever you find yourself lagging in inspiration, you go and answer a prompt. When you’re done writing, it asks if you want to share it on your blog. With a click, it will be sent as a new blog entry. You can then go in through wordpress to adjust the format some or just leave it as is.
I’ve used it a few times already and to great success.
So I think it will really help out my peepz with their blogging.
Now get back to writing!