To the NaBloPoMo virgins – some words of wisdom from a veteran

I got the headline and post all worked out in my head and started a draft and hit save before selecting draft and now Feedburner has announced it to my readers, and there was no content. Oops.

Last year I decided to join the maniacs that wanted to post at least once per day for every single day in November. It was called NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month). And by jove, I did it. Guess what, I’m not doing it again this year. I’m not that stupid. You wouldn’t think that posting once a day is very hard and it’s not if that’s what you do as the norm. My post average is about 4-5 a week and doing the extra 2-3 posts a week is harder than you might imagine.

NaBloPoMo had it’s humble beginnings at Eden Kennedy’s Fussy.org blog. Lots of maniacs joined in, and some dropped out for various reasons. As I said throughout last November I like a challenge and I wasn’t about to give up just to maintain my sanity.

This year, NaBloPoMo has gone all social. It’s not its own domain now – nablopomo.com and you can do all sorts of things there. That’s a bit of a guess because I haven’t joined or had too much of a look.

So, those words of wisdom from a NaBloPoMo veteran.

You think you know your schedule during November, but you don’t. I thought I had my November fairly nailed down last year, but it turned out to be manic. I had an interstate friend visit, I had parenting problems and I was still on dialup for most of it for goodness sake. And this was also while I was doing some extra freelance work on top of my day job. Also, don’t forget it’s the month before Christmas and things are hotting up for the holiday season.

Even if you have a NaBloPoMo plan, it will more than likely go out the window. So you 2007 NaBloPoMo’ers – take note. November’s going to the busiest month of your year.

I’ll be watching from the sidelines, sipping a cool drink, maintaining a cool head and patting myself on the back for not joining in this year. My last word. If you do take part, you’ll probably get really really sick of trying to remember how the heck to write NaBloPoMo and just start dribbling rubbish. I promise not to say ‘I told you so’.