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.

My Blog, My Opinion

Local forum posters have been lambasting another community blogger for voicing his opinions in his blog, which is hosted by a local daily newspaper. These posters erroneously seem to believe that bloggers should check their lives at the door, when, in fact, personal perspective is the point of a blog.

Blogs are not designed to be online impartial news sources, even if a media company sponsors them. It would be more accurate to think of bloggers as Op-Ed columnists than journalistically neutral news writers although a good journalist can be both a news writer and a columnist, winnowing out personal biases when writing a news story and, when appropriate, still contributing their opinions to one or the other side of a good debate.

News writing and opinion writing are two different genres with different styles. In fact, an editor has recently pointed out to me that blogging has its own style that can be hard for traditional writers to develop.

The complaining posters also feel that they have been denied an opportunity to voice their opposing opinions, but they haven’t. There is a comments section located at the end of each blog post to be used at the option of the blogger and the blogger they are criticizing has chosen to allow comments. He even reads them.

And that’s my opinion.

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“A blog is a little first amendment machine.” - Blogger Jay Rosen, June 5, 2007.

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“It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.” - Lesley Gore, 1963