Because It’s There

I thought, on my bus-ride home today, about the all kinds of things I could write about tonight for my second day of daily blogging but then, realizing I will have little more energy than right now, before the food gets here and goes in my face, I decided I will save the thoughtful posts for the weekend and for now, at least, stick to monstrously long sentences and more easily addressed ideas.

Annnnnnd … breath.

Why would you nablogpomo? asked the inimitable and perhaps moustachioed P-Man over at Mother-Woman.

Short answer: Because it’s a hell of a lot easier than writing a novel.

Two Novembers ago I participated in national novel writing month and wrote a novel in a month. Yay me, etc. Hero biscuits abounded. Last year, with a 4 month old kicking around the house, I knew that another novel wasn’t going to happen and besides I don’t feel right about writing another fresh novel when I have two and a half perfectly good first drafts of potential novels that need attention. So I decided to do a blog post a day instead.

More why? Because I love to write and I don’t do it enough and I have this crazy sense of responsibility, even to imaginary deadlines and people I can’t see, so if I say I’m going to post every day for a month, I am actually going to feel really guilty and bad if I don’t. The fear of that guilt and bad-ness is enough to motivate me.

I was pleasantly surprised at how wonderful an exercise it was to write a blog post every day in November 2006. There were several elements that made it wonderful:

– lots of other people were doing it too and there was a nifty way to find their blogs and discover kindred hearts and be in common with hundreds of strangers
– people found me that way too and I increased my readership by at least 10%
– because more people were reading, I tried harder
– because of all the practice, my writing improved
– my brain felt clearer
– my soul was fed.

Sure, with all that cheesy good stuff you’d think I coulda kept it up another month or 12 but like I said: I feel obliged to please other people, not myself. If I just told myself to write every day, I wouldn’t. It’s sick. I know.

So this year, the 4 month old is a 16 month old, I’m working full time and commuting 2 + hours a day and I’m 16 weeks pregnant and it’s so fetching dark out there, plus when I’m not complaining, I’m sleeping, so you’re right to wonder why. The hell. I would do this.

Because I am a writer who prioritizes everything but writing. And this here’s a way I can keep that bit of myself alive just one more month.