30 – day blog challenge –
November is the first time, probably ever, that I am able to set the entire month aside for writing. I pushed all editing jobs to December. No grant applications, either. Peter’s visiting in a couple weeks, and some pain-in-the-butt medical stuff is coming up, but other than that, this is the month to plant my flag as a writer, finally. The thing I’ve wanted to do for decades but couldn’t because of all the other life stuff.
Apparently in addition to being National Novel Writing Month, November is National Blogging Month or some similar name. The idea is to write a post every day. There is a pleasant group called NanoPoblano that has a 30-day blogging challenge, and they were kind enough to admit me. Today I asked my web hosting company to create a blog page on my website, though it will take a couple weeks. So I must post here in the meantime.
I don’t know what the hell I’ll write. But for me, that’s part of the fun of it. Also fun is that the participants will be reading and supporting each other’s work. I’ve already read some good stuff.
I decided not to try a new novel for NaNoWriMo, though it’s so much fun. Instead I need to focus on the most ass-dragging novel in history, my manuscript that is now in the hands of Renita Lofton McKinney, owner of A Book a Day Author Services. I know she is going to set my rambling mind straight on what I need to do to make that book make sense. So I will spend the month working on her suggestions and other things I know I need to do with it.
I also am going to dedicate this month to poetry. That’s the thing that got me started with writing when I was 8, that called to me when I dropped out of college after having an abortion in 1974, and kept popping up its head, like a flower breaking through concrete, in all the subsequent years of activism, marginally successful/sometimes doomed romance, work work work work, and family. I have a bunch of poems that I wrote over the decades but never did anything with. So this month I’m going to read a lot of other poets, revisit my poems, improve what I can, research places to submit them, and hit send on the Submittable button several times.
It’s kind of scary. But kind of exhilarating.
