Joanne the Coach

Things I Have Learned From My Month of Blogging

Thank you for asking, I had a lovely time at the party.  And it got even better when I rifled through the goody bag on the way home to find - oh joy! - the Coca Cola Social Responsibility Report.  Can cross that off my list for Santa now.

At last it's the end of National Blog Posting Month.  About frickin' time.  Those nablopomo people have a lot to answer for.  So what has this month of daily blogging taught me?

• The MediaGuardian website must be approached with caution (and not at all if you've got a hangover).
• Posts giving useful links for writers will get more hits than all the other posts put together.
• Someone unexpected leaving a comment can make you drop your toast.
• Actually I really enjoyed it
• Though I definitely need to get out more.

Are We Nearly There Yet?

Good grief, this daily blogging thing is hard.

**sigh** Isn't this month over yet?  I am gagging for December to begin.

Meanwhile, in the modern world, Brighton NUJ have started to podcast their meetings.  Click here for a listen.  Quite nifty, should you want to go to a meeting without ever actually going to a meeting.  I went to a great NUJ meeting earlier in the year, where the most vocal person there eventually admitted that she had thought she was coming to a meeting about nuclear disarmament, but had wandered into the wrong room by mistake.

Blogging Along

I first heard about National Blog Posting Month over at Anna Pickard's blog Little Red Boat . I don't go there too often as it is SUCH feckin' good writing it makes me go AAAARGGGGHHH (that's a good aaaargggghhh by the way.  (Not a piratey one)).

Now I see Anna is backing away from the NaBloPoMo commitment by downgrading from promising one post a day, to no less than 30 posts this month.  Though she might live to regret that particular compromise.

The latest NaBloPoMo newsletter casually mentions that there are prizes for the best blogs that complete the project.  Did you hear that Anna? - Posts Win Prizes.  Now, I have no idea what these prizes are, nor indeed what you have to do to win one but it does add a tiny smidgen of excitement to the game. 

What prize could possibly be appropriate recompense for a non-stop month of blogging?  A mini-hammock for your poor wee tired typing fingers? A listings magazine with GET OUT MORE scribbled on the front?  Answers on a postcard please...

Oh No, What Have I Done...

Normally my policy with this blog is to wait until I have something to say before posting (not, as you might have assumed, to sit on the sofa eating crisps before remembering that I meant to post about 4 days previously.  Oh no.  **looks skyward and whistles** ).

But not not this month.  Doctor Who fans will know NaBloPoMo as a particularly choice Judoon swearword.  But it also stands for National Blog Posting Month, AKA the wimp's version of NaNoWriMo (I couldn't possibly tell you what that means in Judoon.  You would faint).

So the NaBloPoMo deal is this:  bloggers commit to posting every day for the month of November.  And, er, that's it basically.  For some particularly prolific bloggers, this may mean scaling back their usual output.  But for me it means going down a new, slightly scary path.

Bring it on.