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It's that time again; time to commit to posting every day for a full month by joining in with NaBloPoMo. The point? Well, beyond the endurance factor -- of becoming a writing athlete -- there's the benefit from daily writing. I use it as a way to warm up before getting into book writing. And then there's the community aspect: joining NaBloPoMo is like joining a gym. You're writing in a group and feeding off that for motivation rather than writing alone.
So what is the NaBloPoMo theme of the month?
January 1st is a blank slate, and you can make the year anything you want it to be? Leave your job and embark on a new career. Open that blank document and start that novel you always wanted to write. Join that online dating site, signup for a new class, or close your eyes and point to a place on a globe to plan your next vacation.
Beginnings can be scary, but as the adage by Lao-tzu goes, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." You can take a single step, right? And after that, it's just putting foot before foot, taking your new journey slowly and letting it unfold at its own pace. Along the way, blog about your experience, not only so readers can follow along, but so that you have a record of how far you've come any time you feel yourself falter.
The theme and writing prompts, as always, are there as a guide if you want some structure to your month, though you can always sign up for NaBloPoMo and chart your own path.
If you've never joined NaBloPoMo, this is the time to do so. It starts January 1st and run until January 30th. Just make the commitment to (1) blog daily for the month (nothing more to it than that!) and (2) to support your fellow NaBloPoMo'ers by reading a handful of the other blogs on the blogroll. Cheer them along and they'll cheer you on too. You can sign up for January's NaBloPoMo until January 5th. You can grab the official badge here and upload a link to the badges you make.
It's as simple as that: post daily on your own blog. That's it. You can get fancy and cross-post your blog posts onto the NaBloPoMo site. If you need daily inspiration, bookmark the NaBloPoMo prompts page for January (prompts are also tweeted from @BlogHerBlogging). Prompts are posted Monday through Friday, and weekends are for free-writing.
NaBloPoMo is what you make of it. At its core, all you need to do is post daily on your blog. The point of NaBloPoMo is not to be restricted by the theme, but instead to either take it or leave it. If you'll do better blogging every day based on what's happening in your world, throw aside the daily prompts.
So what are you beginning this year? If you can name at least five things, it means you have at least five blog posts inside of you. And if you can do five posts, you can certainly expand that and do an extra 25 or so.
Melissa writes Stirrup Queens and Lost and Found. Her novel about blogging is Life from Scratch.
