I am all for daily novel writing and, of course, daily blog writing, but rather than 30 posts about the numerous bowls of Cheerios I consume throughout the week, I am for daily comment leaving. Hence NaComLeavMo--National Comment Leaving Month (the "national" is relative to wherever you happen to be). Comments are half of the blogging experience, yet the comments box often gets short shrift, leaving the post simply dangling in the blogosphere. Comments give affirmation, support, closure.

My heart sank when this morning's segment on the Today Show started off with Hoda Kotb announcing "... the growing popularity of... 'mommy blogs.'" She used air quotes, and everything. You could've substituted anything bizarre and mystifying in the quotations, actually. "Alien bloodsuckers," or "giant pink sea monsters," for example.

I turned to my husband. "This is not going to end well," I said.

But first, let me back up.

I wrote my first play in the third grade sitting cross-legged on the top bunk with a yellow tablet in my lap, hollering at my sister to leave the room so I could 'get the words out in peace'. That night, my father, a gifted writer albeit a sentence contortionist, began quiet coaching. Lesson Number One: To write, one must read. Perhaps this is why, in the midst of my own writing doldrums (ha!

When I started blogging at Surrender, Dorothy, I knew trying to trademark my site name would be impossible. I stole the phrase from the sky, for one thing (although mine, with a comma, insists Dorothy surrender rather than be surrendered, which I think is an important point, ahem). For another thing, there is already a Surrender, Dorothy band, a movie, a book, you name it. We can’t all be suing each other. So I never thought much about the other Surrender, Dorothy bloggers out there, and there are many – I see them in my Google alerts. No big deal, I think. As long as I differentiate my writing style and include my photo, people will always know who I am. However, that said, I totally respect the right of anyone to trademark an idea. Trademarking is totally different than copyrighting.

Update: I have added a link to Brownfemipower's final post. This looks like a temporary page so I have no idea how long the link will be active. 

I've written before about blogger exhaustion - which for me, and what seems to be pretty common among some of my fellow bloggers - is when we start to question the legitimacy or social relevance of what we are preparing to write about before we start composing when previously, it was a spontaneous, effortless pastime.

Some eighty percent believe we have a 'book in us' (source, a 2002 Joseph Epstein essay), words and ideas waiting for the right moment, the right inspiration, the right typewriter, the right space, the right agent -- to rush onto paper and into print and off to the flurry of book tours and the resulting fame and fortune. Is it the same for food bloggers, do we have 'inner cookbooks' lurking inside our blogs? Are any of us the next new host on Food Network?