NaBloPoMo

Hallelujah!! I did it! It's November 30th - the last day of National Blog Posting Month and I posted every day.

And here's the background:

One of the writer's trade magazines - either The Writer or Writers Digest - published an item about NaBloPoMo that unfortunately caught my attention and apparently stirred up my competitive spirit.

The challenge put out to all bloggers was: Post every day of the month of November. And I can tell you now it is really hard! My admiration has increased a hundred fold for newspaper columnists who have turned out thoughtful, literate essays for many years and can still face a keyboard.

On the plus side, it is a good writing exercise and you produce stories that would otherwise be forgotten. On the negative side, your significant others can get really annoyed at the amount of time you spend on the whole thing.

For all who enjoyed my blog: Thanks. I'm not giving it up, but probably cutting back to a few posts a week.

To my family: Thanks. I'm not giving it up, but probably cutting back to a few posts a week. Honest.

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If you think you might want to try your own blog, start by going to your real brick-and-mortar library. There are a lot of books about the technical aspects of setting up your blog. For the writing part I highly recommend the book Dispatches From Blogistan by Suzanne Stefanac which the Hillsborough Library has.

Online I found two helpful articles: "10 Tips on Writing the Living Web" by Mark Bernstein and "How to Write a Better Weblog" by Dennis A. Mahoney.

www.nablopomo.com

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"... writers do not find subjects: subjects find them. There is not so much a search as a state of open susceptibility." - Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973)British novelist, story writer, essayist, and memoirist.