Our fearless conductor Chris Masse has mastered the art of blogging, including the key ingredient of consistent daily posts. He knows what Stephen King knows: quantity and quality can be friends.
For a pseudo-blogger like me intimidated by those seven letters “-P u b l i s h”-, I could use some prodding from ludicrous and arbitrary deadlines. Sixteen of them, in fact.
Enter World Blogging Month (WoBloMo), coming in March. The goal is simple: Blog every other day from March 1 to March 31 and you win.
I’-m in. So far as I can tell so are two other people.
One of them, Mark Reid, summed up his reason for joining nicely: “-By forcing regular posts I’m hoping to not indulge myself as much in my writing, find the main thing I want to say in each post and just say it.”-
March is a good month to write since it happens to be a popular month to surf.
So join us and “-just say it”- on every odd day of March. See you on the other side.
Full disclosure.
Odd head wants to blog on odd days.
“When to do it
Every odd day of March: March 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 11th, 13th, 15th, 17th, 19th, 21st, 23rd, 25th, 27th, 29th, and 31st.”
At first, sounds absurd.
“Why?
WoBloMo, like its ancestors, is founded on the principle that perfect is the enemy of good and nothing ensures imperfection more than an arbitrary deadline. The goal is to muzzle your inner critic just long enough to bang out 80% of what you wanted to say.”
The “arbitrary deadline” argument sounds good enough.
But then why in March, only. Why not some “arbitrary deadlines” stochastically peppered during the *year*? That would sound more sustainable to me. That would push bloggers to sustain blogging throughout the year. That would lead to a great social networking group… All the posts published on that particular days and times would be interconnected… We would meet strangers we would have never meet otherwise…
NaBloPoMo.com is a social network on Ning dedicated to blogging once a day for an entire month, with no particular month designated as “special”, though with themes and/or prizes during various months.
Your idea is even better, and could actually help sustain real blogging.
Still, there is something reassuring about having a very focused and confined challenge that you can plow through knowing exactly when it will end.
Perhaps some of the woblomo discipline will carry over into the rest of the year. Or, more likely, April will become World Ignore Your Blog month.
“carry over into the rest of the year”
That should be a goal.