November done… drops mic

On this final day of November, I am done… 30 days, 30 posts. (Actually, there were 32 posts but I don’t get extra credit for those.)

Checking back over the past several months, I noticed that I routinely write around 27-28 posts each month. This whole Post A Day thing should have been easy, peasy. How wrong I was.

Deadlines are a killer…

I participate in several writing groups, and each one has a specific window of time to submit entries. The loophole is that there is no commitment (implied or demanded) to participate every week. There’s no pressure.

With this National Blog Posting Month (and the more intense Novel Writing Month with its 50,000 word count winners’ requirement), it can be brain numbing. You’re trying to create something you can be proud of in 24 hours or less (there’s a standard 1,660 daily word count goal for NaNoWriMo). That kind of constraint can harsh a creative mellow.

There were days, typing the same word over and over 100 times was tempting. There are some published posts that are probably more boring than that, but I had to get something done before the day was over.

The exercise is still valuable. It challenges you to work outside your comfort zone – write different genres, take a chance on poetry, show off a photo or two, learn to write under duress.

I wouldn’t want to feel that I had to post that often every month, but it’s good to know I can.