What I Learned From NaBloPoMo

I learned about National Blog Post Month by accident.

You might think that someone who has been writing a basically-weekly blog for six and a half years would know that there was a full month dedicated to blogging (a verb I detest, just for the record). In my case, though, National Blog Post Month had either never been on my radar or it ended up grouped in with other forgotten pieces of information, like phone numbers of high school friends or what I was looking for when I walked into the living room this morning.

National Blog Post Month (which translates to the ridiculous hashtag #NaBloPoMo) is designed to challenge writers to publish a new blog post every day of November. The idea is that publishing daily – as opposed to weekly or less often – forces the writer to silence their inner editor more so they can write more, publish more and just see what happens. Too often, writers will hesitate to write a piece because “I don’t know what to say,” “No one wants to read what I write” or any number of other hesitations that really all just boil down to a lack of self-confidence. NaBloPoMo becomes a sort of accountability group that pushes writers to meet goals and spur their creativity.

I found out about it when I was scrolling through Twitter on November first and saw that some writer friends of mine were participating. I knew it wasn’t realistic for me to publish a new post every day of the month; writing on the weekends was never going to happen, regardless of my intentions. I still wanted to push myself, though, so made a personal compromise and set my goal at one post for every weekday during the month. That meant twenty posts for a month when I would usually post four or five. Still ambitious, but more attainable than thirty.

If you’ve been following my writing recently, you know I didn’t reach my goal. I didn’t even get halfway there. I published eight blog posts in the month – six of which were brand new pieces – and wrote one more that didn’t get published because it was just a little too personal.¹ Still, even if I didn’t reach the goal, I learned some things in the process.

1. Writing is hard.

Writing is relatively easy when I know what I want to say and have a clear idea from the start about how I want a post to look. That happens pretty rarely, though, unfortunately. I’m usually able to at least start with an idea and muddle through some starts and stops until I find a structure for the post that works. But when I don’t have a particular inspiration, it’s rough coming up with something. There’s a reason two of my blog posts last month were posts that had just been sitting in my drafts folder; sometimes I just don’t feel like I have something new to say. Which brings us to…

2. Just click “Publish.”

People are often their own worst critics and writers are certainly no exception. We pore over our words, tinkering for just the right combination of phrases in the hopes that we’ll reach something inside our readers. We edit, take breaks, edit again, ask for input and edit some more and sometimes we’re still not satisfied. There are times, though, when the right move is just to say, “Okay, that’s enough” and click “Publish.” Maybe we’re right that a post is only average; but maybe it will end up garnering a more positive reaction than we could have imagined.

On that note, remember…

3. Trust your readers.

People choose to read an author for any number of reasons. Usually, they relate to the subject matter or they appreciate the quality of the writing or some combination of the two. There is an implicit trust that readers place in a writer when they choose to read, regardless of the writer’s opinion of their own product. Writers need to reciprocate that support by trusting their readers to judge pieces on their own. I’ll admit that I was never thrilled with one of the posts I published from my drafts folder last month. I thought it was fairly one-note and didn’t see it going anywhere but it ended up garnering more page views and positive feedback than I expected. We need to give our readers the space to connect with our writing in the ways they find meaningful, even if those links aren’t immediately apparent to us.

4. Keep writing.

That’s really the bottom line. People are looking for stories to read. They’re looking for escape, connection and meaning and writing gives them what they’re looking for. Plus, as I said earlier, we don’t know how our readers will be affected by our writing. A post may get crickets as a response but it also may lead to emotional and heartfelt comments; we just won’t know unless we put our writing out there.

Thanks for reading, everyone.

^{1. I’ve got a couple of posts like that one, actually. They may see the light of day eventually but now isn’t the right time. We’ll have to wait and see.↩}