Day 25

Hi, duckies.  Thanks for staying with us despite my slipping out for a few days of brain recuperation.  The prompt for today is:  Who is your favorite author?  Or What is your favorite book?  Or possibly:  Do you find yourself thinking like the characters in the last book you read talk?  Is that just me?  It's totally just me, isn't it?

One More Week! Sort of!

We only have one week to go in our blogging challenge! Sort of! One week and one day--that's a week, right?

What have you learned from this experience, if anything? What are your greatest challenges? What are your successes?

Day 17 -- Writing Prompt

Today's prompt is not sexy, but it works for me: Write and report on your favorite fall recipe. For example, last night I made peanut butter cookies and thought about grandma.

You can do better than I just did right there, can't you?

Day 16 -- Roll call!

So? Who's been blogging every day? I'll start:


Me! Meeee! I have!


And it's a freaking miracle. Although, I have been enjoying it. Since I'm trying to remain focused on small craft business, now everything I see turns into a business post. I throw in some personal stuff, too, because I suspect people like that, but mostly it's focused.


How about you? 


~Amy (originator of this nonsense)

Day 9--And Now I'm Back From Outer Space

Hi, turnips!  It's been a few days since I've touched base here, but I've been swamped like a swampy person since Day 5.  How're you doing?  How's the family?  Any problems?  Any triumphs?  Does anybody know why Derek Dooley wears those awful pants?

Today's prompt is:  Given that Autumn is busting out all over, which is your favorite season and why?  Alternately, which is your LEAST favorite season and, of course, why?


Hope everybody's writing away like little writing bugs.  Or ferrets.  Or whatever industrious animal would be a good writer.  Is that a bad metaphor?

Day 5---WAS There a Day 5?

I spent today busily happy (or happily busy) with Will and the kidlets, and that's why the prompt is going up right now, with one hour and twenty minutes left in the day.  Prompt:  What is your favorite way to spend time with your family?


Each year, I learn something from NaBloWriMo and what I've learned this year is that waiting til 10 o'clock at night is NOT what I should be doing in order to get a good post in at I'm Not Hannah.  So tomorrow, I'll be posting around six in the morning, which is my usual wake up time.

What have you learned so far?

Day 4--Now With Less Bitterness

Today's prompt:  What advice would you give your fifteen-year-old self?

Whew!  So, yesterday was a grump day for me, complete with grousing and grimacing and snarking.  I wasn't particularly angry, just grumpy and when it got to the end of the day and I hadn't posted my NaBloWriMo post for the day, I really just let it all hang out.  Insanely.  Honestly, it was like I was a crazy person.  

For the record:

• I do not feel stressed out by NaBloWriMo.  Having almost EIGHTY folks to hang out with is awesome and while, yes, I wish we had new buttons, I'm not wigging out over the fact that we don't.  I'll get to them.
• I'm not overdoing it.  My tendency is actually to UNDERdo it, so having NaBloWriMo as the frames of my day (prompt in the morning, post in the evening) actually spurs me to do stuff.  Wish I could make fiction writing my frame.  (This might be a light bulb moment.  I'll keep you posted.)
• You all, with your support and defenses and soothing words, are so cool.  
• The blog feed thing is making me nuts.  A, it lost Selma, which is absolutely not okay.  And B, it won't recognize my Mama, which makes me crazy.  I still don't have any reasons why.  I suggested to my Mama and now suggest to everybody else, to post links to your posts to the Facebook page if you're having problems with this.  

Okay.  Go have good days and stop worrying about me.  I've already cleaned the bathroom, which I was amused to discover is better than being awakened by a nine-year-old weirdo at four o'clock any day.  So I'm all good.

Day 3--Chugging Right Along

Prompt for Monday, October 3:  Many people have lucky socks or shirts or stones or pens.  Is there an object you own that you consider lucky?  If so, why?


List.  Because it's early, Jeffrey's been up since 4 (WHAT??) and my brain hurts.

1. Still haven't figured out the feed thing.  From various sites I've found, this is a fairly common thing on Blogger blog lists, but there doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason to it, nor an easy fix.  Yay.  So just keep writing.  I know it must be frustrating to those of you who ARE writing not to see your post on the list, but I'll try to keep an eye on the guys at the bottom (anybody want to join me in that?) and visit and comment on your blogs.  Apparently, sometimes the "fix" is just to not to anything.  Technology.
2. I know, I know, believe me I know that y'all are craving some updated buttons.  I, too, would enjoy getting rid of the old buttons and am in the process of designing three that I think are Teh Cool.  (Spooky, Steam-Punky, and Elegant) Unfortunately, I also have to do things like take care of my sick babies, repair the damage my dog keeps doing to my garden, go to work, eat, clean my house, and sleep.  Today I go to work and hopefully there won't be twenty babies waiting on me to be photographed so that I can get home and do the buttons, but if there ARE twenty babies, that puts me home late and then there's still taekwando lessons to be shuttling the Bug to and supper to cook and all of the other Mama-related stuff that has to get tackled.  So. Yes to the new buttons, but patience is required.  If anybody else designs buttons and would like to do so, feel free to do so and share them with us.  That would be Teh Cool, as well.
3. I'm usually not so grumpy, but FOUR O'CLOCK.  WITH LOUDNESS.  AND CHANTING.  AND DEMANDS TO PLAY THE DS.  
4. Ahem
5. The deadline for late entries will be the 6th, which is Thursday.  (This is also my personal deadline for buttons, a prompt list, and a list of prizes and their dates.)  I am LOVING all of the late entries, loving the diversity, loving it all, but after that date, no new blogs will be added.  Unless chocolate is involved.  Then...I might be influenced.
6. Am I too grumpy this morning?  
7. I'm sorry.  Just call me Grumples McButthead.  I'll try to be more perky after I've had seven or eight mugs of chai.
8. I really do love you.  Promise.

Weird Update Thingamabob

So chickadeedles, I've come to realize that some folks are updating, but it's not showing up on the feed.  I don't know if this is an issue with just Blogger blogs.  If so, I suspect it has something to do with Firefox, because I keep getting messages when I log onto Blogger in Firefox that Firefox and Blogger have broken up and they aren't speaking and anything that they used to have in common is now so much ashes and dust.

What?

I don't know.  Try doing your stuff in Chrome.  If anybody else is having problems, let me know and I will. ..I don't know.  Kick somebody's arse or something.

Today's prompt comes from Julianna and goes "If you could live the life of any heroine or hero from one of your favorite books, which one would it be?"  I'm doing a spin on it, but I'll be writing something like that in a few minutes (or hours...whichever.)  I want to make sure that y'all know you don't HAVE to use the prompt, nor do you have to use it on the day I post it.  In fact, you can post today's prompt on the 17th.  There are few rules around here, my friends.

River's fever took a sharp left turn toward barfing and the chills last night, so I didn't get all of the prompts or the buttons up.  All apologies, my loves.  Got a few more entries last night (and this morning), as well, so I'll be adding those in a few moments. If you added last night or early this morning, you probably aren't on the list, but if you added yesterday, you SHOULD be (even if my Excel suddenly and inexplicably developed a problem somehow related to Frontpage and exploded...sigh.)  If you don't see yourself up there, let me know!

You'll note that I linked to Julianna's blog, "In the Playpen," above in the prompt.  I encourage you to visit as many of the blogs on the list as you can.  Not every blog will interest you, but even a friendly "hi" can make a fledgling (or experienced) feel good.

Happy writing!

Happy October!!!

Aaaaaand....we're off!

While I'm still busy cataloging entries and prizes and prompts and trying to get a button made, I wanted to go ahead and say, "Good luck!"  And "You rock!"  And "Yes, we're all crazy!" and "Wheee!"

The blog prompt for today is "Why do you blog?"  You don't HAVE to write about this.  Most of your readers already know.  BUT--you're probably new to a lot of us, so that's what we're going for today.  I'll have a full list later on in the day.

I wish you all happy, stress-free writing and I hope you have a great time.  Thanks so much for joining us!  I look forward to getting to know all of you a little better.

BTW, if you didn't send me an email with your name and info, it's possible that you aren't on the list yet.  So if you just signed up on the Facebook page or on a comment and don't see your name on the 2011 list, shoot me an email so I can make sure we're all accounted for?

Okay?

Okay.

Yay!

UPDATE 1:  I've started to add the bloggers.  If you don't see your blog up by the end of the day, please email me.  No doubt Excel ate the part of my brain where your entry was lodged.

UPDATE 2:  Back at adding bloggers after the soccer game during which I yelled at River for not showing any hustle only to get her back home and find she has a fever.  AWESOME MOM OF THE YEAR AWARD!!!  Anyway, we've got some more entries, so it's going slow.  Not that I'm complaining.  This is excccceeeellllent.

UPDATE 3:  So the kidlet's fever kept going up, so I took her to the after hours clinic and now she's curled up all hot and uggy on my lap while I type around her.  I WILL get you all on here (you, too, WT...and you can sing if you want), but it's gonna take a bit.  Buttons will come, too.  Promise.

Sooooo Close

Hi, muffins!  There are only two days left until the blogging extravaganza begins.  I'd like to grab a few more bloggers, so if you're up for it, spread the word.

1. I'll be updating here all day long, I think, but I wanted to let you know that we now have a Facebook page up and running for those so inclined.  You can find it by...uh...pressing the button over there on the side, or by following this link:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/NaBloWriMo/203905936342372  Go like it and then we'll chat and tell each other what we're doing in the carpool line.  Or share funny Jon Stewart clips.
2. Every year, I get emails from folks on the 30th worried that it's too late.  Or the 1st.  Or the 12th.  My response is always the same.  "No.  No, it is not.  Join us!  Huzzah!"

An Example of a "No Time for Blogging" Post

Hi, my sweets.  No time for a long post today, just wanted to tell you that I've got all of your entries for NaBloWriMo and I'll be sending out email notifications and/or huzzahs later in the evening.  I'm sorry I don't have buttons yet, but I'll get those out as well.  Note to self for next year:  plan ahead so if awesome stuff falls in your lap, you don't let NaBloWriMo get shoved aside.  Anyway, I'm super, super, super excited about it and can't wait to get started.  Please keep spreading the word, y'all.  You rock.

You know that, don't you?

Happy Harvest Moon!

I'm not sure what that has to do with NaBloWriMo, frankly, but it IS the Harvest Moon, so hum a few bars of Neil Young and write me an email to sign up for the October blog-writing festapalooza.  So far, we have ELEVEN writers!  Woohoo!

 A few quick notes:  most of the folks signing up thus far are not down with the categories.  I'll give it a few more days, but far be it from me to pigeonhole y'all if you don't want to pigeonholed.  (Have you ever wondered about the etymological background of that word?  Like...were people actually stuffing pigeons into holes?  That seems a bit extreme.)  Anyway, I'm thinking the categories are going to be nixed.

I'm considering setting up a Facebook page.  What do you think?  Too much?  It might be a good way for us to keep up with each other during the off-season.

We've had several folks offer up crafty goodness, e-books (Yay, Ms. Amy!!), and header designs for giveaway prizes.  Most excellent!

I know, I know, I don't have the buttons ready yet, but I'll have them up by tomorrow, I promise.

Only a couple more weeks, y'all.  Yay!

Hey, y'all.  It's sixty-eight degrees outside right now, which makes me want to rip off all my close and go skipping down the street.

But this post isn't about a potentially middle-aged lady limping around frightening the neighbors (although maybe THAT would get their attention).  Nope, this is a heads up, my loves, because National Blog-Writing Month  is right around the corner.

What's this NaBloWriMo, you say?  (Except for those of you who have been hanging around the NaBloWriMo water cooler with me for a few years now...y'all go ahead and file your fingernails or organize your CDs or bake a lime chiffon pie for a second.)  Well, a few years ago, the incomparable Miz Amy decided that NaNoWriMo shouldn't have all the fun and she started this here festival of bloggy goodness.  The idea is simple:  every day, for a month, you write a blog post.  Any blog post.  You can blog about anything you want: your hubs, your kids, that weird lady who smells the bananas in Hell-Mart...really, the possibilities are endless.  The only catch is that, for the entire month of October, you write an entry every single day.

Is this challenging?  Why, yes.  Yes, it is.  A couple of times last year, my entries were pretty much:  "I'm tired.  The kids are driving me crazy.  I can't find my tea mug."  It was inspiring, I tell you.  And, in fact, there have been years when I DIDN'T write every day.  The whole point of NaBloWriMo is to increase your posting, but we don't exactly come out with sticks and beat you with them if you miss a day or two.

Now, I say the whole point of NaBloWriMo is to increase posting, and that's true enough.  But can I tell you a secret?  The BEST part of it, for me, is meeting new folks and catching up with old friends.  I don't visit blogs like I used to, but I try to make a point, in October, to visit all of the blogs I can every day.  In fact, one thing I realized while I was writing this is that, somehow, NaBloWriMo has come to mean Autumn to me and has settled itself in snuggly as a part of Visiting Season.

I'M SO EXCITED!!!!!

Ahem.

I've been chatting with a few of y'all about changing things up a little for this year.  Here's what I've got so far:

• We'll be offering the option to categorize yourself this year.  I'll be coming up with the categories based on who signs up.  You WON'T be forced to enter a category.  If you don't want to be pigeon-holed, we are all about you following your bliss, man.  
• We'll be putting up a prompt every day.  This was a sporadic feature last year, but THIS year, I'm gonna look to you guys for some suggestions.  So start sending them in, yo!
• We're considering doing some prizes this year.  Of course, the prizes will come from...uh...US, so if you're craftily inclined or you have some great talent or product you'd like to share with us, let me know.  For example, I might offer up a header redesign with matching background for your blog.  Or I'll edit some of your snapshots.  Or crochet you a groovy scarf.  The prizes might be random and they might be specifically for things like:  funniest post, most thought-provoking post, et cetera.  

Okay, so are you ready?  Are you set?  Here's what you do:

Shoot me an email at nothannah@comsouth.net with the subject line NaBloWriMo Entry.  In the body of your email, tell me your name, the name of your blog, and the category you feel best describes your blog.  (If you so choose, man.)  If the spirit moves you, include a prompt or two.  If you feel like you might be able to contribute a prize, let me know.  (BTW, vendors who contribute will be able to put up a button on the NaBloWriMo site.)  The deadline for entries is Friday, September 30th.  

In a couple of days, I'll have some buttons you can use on your blog to announce your participation and hopefully spread the news.  We grew by leaps and bounds last year, and I'm hoping to break a hundred participants this year.  Well, not break them.

I've already told y'all, this is a violence-free event.  

I mean, we'd like to have a hundred participants.  

You knew that, didn't you?

Yay!  

Day the Last: Thought on Writing a Blog Post Every Day

Well, I did it.  We did it.  Woohooo!!!! All rigght!!!!! Break it down!!!!! 

*Pause for celebratory butt-shaking.*

Now, let's get down to brass tacks.  In list form, because it's what I do best, people.

1. Many, many of us wrote every day, which is awesome.  (No, I didn't count because I was busy making Halloween costumes yesterday and today my dining room is covered up in chopped up khaki pants and green gauze and checking on the posting stats of 70-plus blogs seems crazyface.)  Many, many of us wrote ALMOST every day or at least three times a week, and that's awesome, too. Not quite as awesome as the posting every day thing, but you catch my drift.  In case you DIDN'T catch my drift, here it is:  writing every day when you also have life going on can be hard.  But when writing every day becomes PART of your life, then it isn't quite as hard and makes you realize that if you put in even a tiny bit of effort, you can write more.  I hope that regardless of how much you wrote (or didn't write), you learned something about yourself as a writer.
2. Having said that, I must be honest and admit that there were a few days when I wrote complete garbage.  I can safely say that there were eight entries that had no value at all, or so little value that it's pretty hard for me to understand why I even wrote them at all.  At the same time, those entries are in some ways even MORE valuable to me, because they signal that I was committed to doing this thing and I did it, no matter how time-constrained or tired or worried I was.  See, I'm a planner.  I have a million plans and very few of them come to fruition because I fail to work at them, even a little bit.  So even the tiny bit of effort it took to write a post like this signals something more:  commitment to a project.  I NEED that affirmation, so I'm totally going to claim it.
3. Because of the bigger scope of NaBloWriMo this year, I did a craptastic job of reading your posts.  Or writing my other blog.  Or writing THIS blog, because I was too busy writing my own and reading as many of yours as I could.  I definitely think that next year, we'll try to have a different system set up (if Amy's okay with it) that will involve some categorization of some kind that will make it easier to be readers of blogs.  Not sure what to do about the other blog or any other projects that come along, although I think that my November resolution of staying off of FB so much and working on WRITING instead will help with this.
4. BTW, good luck to all of you who are attempting NaNoWriMo this year.  May your 50,000 words come easy and be good.
5. About posting every day (wheeeee!  Welcome to my Stream of Consciousness!):  I think that I'll keep trying to do this on INH, but instead of writing crap, I'll post pictures.  Believe me when I say that I have so many pictures on my computer that it's pretty ridiculous for me NOT to post them.  And I think that posting pictures not only brings your readers "in," it also allows for some great creativity.
6. I'm wondering if any of you would like to have a monthly (or weekly) NaBloWriMo "reunion."  Maybe every Wednesday or the tenth of every  month, we can write a post specifically dedicated to blogging or writing.  (This would be cheating for me, as I already try to write about writing every Wednesday.)  Let me know what you think, mkay?

That's all, folks.  I'm editing Halloween pictures right now for my I'm Not Hannah post for today and will spend the rest of the day digging out my dining room, shopping, and baking for the month ahead.  I'll miss seeing some of you and look forward to reading more of some of you. 

Thanks for this month.  It has been a beautiful learning experience.

2010 Day 14: I Wrote An Entire Post About Cheese

There's really nothing to say other than that, is there?

Cheese, people.

Cheese.

2010 Day 13: Whoa--Five Days?

Sorry it's been so long since an update here--I find that between I'm Not Hannah, Divining Women, and other writerly projects, this one (which actually takes so little time) gets the brunt of the inattention.

Just wanted to give you all a big thumbs up--you're doing great.  I'm enjoying getting to know some of you and getting to know some of you better.  (Here's a weird thing--I find I'm commenting much less on my NaBloWriMo friends' blogs.  I guess it's because I've known them longer and know that they probably are doing the same thing.  Y'all know I luff you, right?  Right.)  So many folks writing so many words...it actually is inspiring tonight's I'm Not Hannah post.

Writing prompt for today:  Describe your ideal writing setting.  Now--tell us if that's where you do your writing.  In other words, does your current office/nook/den/whathaveyou meet the needs you have as a writer?

2010 Day 8: Gearing Up For the Weekend

Whew.  Weekends are hard, aren't they?  So much to do, so much time needed to be spent spending the time with people you didn't spend enough time with during the week. 

And the laundry.  The awful, awful laundry.

Tomorrow, I'll be spending time at the huge fair that comes to our town for two weeks every year.  It is the only time of year that I wholeheartedly love this town, because I love the fair so much that I would marry it if it wasn't, you know, illegal.  And if I had room in my house for all the llamas and cows and...um...ferris wheels. 

I don't know what I'll post tomorrow.  Pictures of the kidlets from fairs past?  Maybe just pictures from the fair, in general.  Saturdays seem like good days to post pictures:  you take pics of the day, you download them when all is said and done, you slap them down on your blog page, and you're done.

Hope you all have lovely--and bloggable--weekends.

2010 Day 7: Woohoo! One Week!

Check us out!  Many of us have written every day on our "main" blogs, most of us have managed at least five days, and almost everybody has written at least once. 

There are always a few folks who sign up and then feel overwhelmed and can't seem to get up on the horse.  It happened to me at least once.  If you're one of the former, yay!  If you're in the middle, yay!  If you haven't written as much as you planned...well, not yay, because you probably (if you're like me) feel down on yourself (or defensive or frazzled or some other negative emotion.)  If you ever DO feel that way, remember that this isn't really a contest--it's a challenge.  NaBloWriMo is a way of testing yourself, determining how much you CAN write on any given topic if you put your mind to it.  So maybe you've found out that writing every day is too difficult for you.  That's okay, right?  We'd still like to keep up with you or get to know you, so even if you haven't been as verbose as you had planned, you can always start today.

BTW, tomorrow will be the last day I add writers.  I'm thrilled with our turnout--SEVENTY-FOUR at last count--but without a new system, it's hard to process so many.  I got some great suggestions about this conundrum, from "leave the system be" to "oh, yeah, catalog this mess." I think that next year, I'll have an actual (short...very short) form for bloggers to fill out, with some basic categories they can choose to drop themselves into.  The reasons for this are pretty simple:  as somebody pointed out, seventy-four bloggers writing every day (or almost every day) is an overwhelming reading task.  I know there are some of you, particularly those in different time zones, that I haven't gotten to, simply because when I steal a moment to read, you're so far down the list that I give up.  (Perhaps I should start in the middle...:D)  So the topic suggestion for today is one I found in comments:  on Saturday or Sunday, how about a list of the blogs you've read this week that are interesting to you?

In any case, y'all are doing great.  I hope you're enjoying writing and reading as much as I am.