Time taken: 30 days
Posts discovered: 31/30!
Rank: A+
That’s what the level end screen would look like if the last month was a game. It seems I even found a secret extra post in there somewhere! I guess this should really be my ‘stood at the end of the assault course, looking back at the trail of destruction’ shot, maybe with a bit of a blood red sunset?
I’ve thought about giving NaNoWriMo a go for a few years now, but never got any further than thinking of ideas. I thought this was going to be a breeze in comparison, after all, I could just write about what happened that day for a month and voila, done! But it doesn’t pan out like that. I found myself wanting to write something at least vaguely interesting each day, something with a bit of substance, and that’s where it becomes tricky. When I look back at the previous thirty posts, there are some which I wish I could go back and re-do. In theory there’s nothing to stop me going back and editing them, but that would be cheating. The main problem I found was making sure I had enough time each day, not thinking of content.
Keeping a regularly updated blog is an investment of time and effort, a bit of a labour of love really. Ideas for content will come, but making sure you’ve got the time set aside each day to sit down and write something is more difficult. I suppose it would be easier if I were writing a ‘themed’ blog, something like the technology blogs, or photography, or something covering a hobby or interest in depth. Mine however seems to have become a bit more eclectic. When I first started writing my thoughts down, it was very much in a diary style, but as the years(!) have gone on it’s become much more of a commentary too, a first-person commentary on me. Odd.
There’s a few positives I can take from having completed NaBloPoMo, such as how cathartic it can be. The big one that I take with me though is realising that even when I sit down and create a new post with no idea of what I’m about to write about, I can do it, and once I start the lexical diarrhoea just flows (apologies for that graphic turn of phrase). It’s helped me start writing review material again, and it’s also made me think that perhaps NaNoWriMo might not be beyond the realms of imagination. It would take a bit of planning (not my strongest point), and I think I’d need the 30-day constraint to do it as following through with things I start has always been another bugbear for me. I’m just intrigued to see what I could come up with though!
Out of curiosity I just ran a summary of my posting for this month, and not including this post itself, I am up over 10,000 words. The aim of NaNoWriMo is a 50,000 word novel. It suddenly takes on a new light of possibility.
To anyone who’s put up with, enjoyed, despised, found humour in, or endured unrelenting mediocrity over the last month of posting – thanks for reading! And a special thanks to BBM for pointing me in this direction in the first place, and providing me with subject matter on more than one occasion, it was an experience eh?. And yes, the ‘inspired’ post is coming soon, I’ve not forgotten!