Get ready for the NaBloPoMo spam

So…this year I’ve decided to do something a little crazy. Which is unlike me, I know. I very rarely do anything spontaneous or bite off more than I can chew.

Jokes. That is exactly like me.

Anyways, this year I’m participating in NaBloPoMo – National Blog Posting Month. Or, in other words, write a blog post every day for the month of November.

About NaBloPoMo

San, from the in between is mine, has an excellent rundown on her blog. The short version is that in 2006 Eden Kennedy tried to participate in NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, and found that writing a novel was too hard. She decided to write blog posts instead, and NaBloPoMo was born. BlogHer hosted it until 2016. San has continued participating every year and now keeps the participant list going on her site.

As far as I can tell, there are no rules other than post something every day.

I’ve updated my sidebar with an image linking to San’s page, where you can view a list of everyone who’s participated each year.

What’s my plan?

I don’t want to go into this blind, because I know I’ll get overwhelmed. But right now here’s my (loose) plan:

• Monday – Thursday: Continue recapping my cruise posts, because I want to get those done. From there, I’m building up a list of random topics, or stuff I’ve had in the backlog but just haven’t gotten around to. I want to show the before-and-after photos of our bathroom renos! And I’m overdue in sharing the books that I’ve read. So there are a few ideas there to draw from.
• Friday: Keep up with my “5 things for Friday” post theme. It’s really fun to write, and it’s just a brain dump!
• Saturday: Photos of the week.
• Sunday: Round up from the weekend.

If I really get stuck for inspiration, San has linked 50 prompts and post ideas from 2024. Those will really help!

As for a writing routine, right now my plan is to fit in some writing after my morning planner and workout, once I’ve made sure my son is ready for school. If all else fails, I can use my lunch break, or smash out a quick half hour at night after my son goes to sleep.

This year I’ve become much more disciplined about only logging on to work at my regular time, whereas previously I’d just start in the morning once all my responsibilities were done. It’s a bit too easy when you work from home! For mental health reasons, I decided to prioritise movement and creativity in the mornings and found that my overall life satisfaction improved, not to mention my positivity at work!

Anyways, I digress. The point is that I have the time available to prioritise it.

Why am I doing this?

I get a lot of creative enjoyment from blogging. It’s an outlet for me, and it’s enjoyable to look back in years to come and read what was going on at the time.

It also means I get to discover new blogs! This year I started “Monday mentions”, but it died off a bit when I found I was struggling with ways to discover new blogs. I keep hunting through the comments on blogs that I follow, and I’ve found the odd one here and there, but I never really had the momentum to bring that back. During NaBloPoMo, San uses the #nablopomo hashtag to promote bloggers on social media, which means I can absolutely stalk the heck out of that hashtag. Plus, the list on San’s site helps too.

This year has been really exciting because I’ve built a bit of a bloggy community that I follow along with, and I’m so grateful for those that take the time to read my site and comment. So having another opportunity to build that out further is super exciting!

Ready to follow along?

So, if you want to follow along, you’ve got a few options:

• Subscribe to my blog (there’s a field in the sidebar you can pop your email address into and subscribe; on mobile and iPad you’ll find the sidebar after all the post content)
• Use an RSS reader to subscribe to my blog (I use Feedly)
• Follow the Kel me about it page on Facebook

If you follow me on Instagram, occasionally I’ll create a post or a story about my posts, but not always. So those three are the best ways to follow along for updates. Or you can just check back from time to time too.

So…here’s to a month of creative writing, hating myself for signing on, and then appreciating that I took the plunge at the end of the month.

Have you ever participated in NaBloPoMo or NaNoWriMo? Do you have any survival tips?