Post-November Update

What feels like a million years ago at the start of November I gave myself the (faintly ridiculous in retrospect) challenge to blog 50,000 words over the course of a month. I am almost certain that I didn’t, er, exactly make it to the magic 50k. I stopped counting about halfway through November when I was distracted by trips away and Pink Training and applying for jobs (siiigh) and the like.

I did publish 35 posts, though- not counting reblogs or guest posts. Buggered if I know what the word count was- WordPress doesn’t seem to have a nice handy “How many words did I write in November?” widget, and it turns out I’m not particularly keen on looking up each one individually. Probably a nice big number, though. More importantly, I got a really good idea of the things I like to do here, the things I want to pursue, and what I can (healthily) commit to.

Left to my own devices I would write every frickin’ hour of the day. The more I write, the more I think about writing and the more issues I want to write on and angles I want to explore. There is no way that I can get through all that and still have time to have a reasonably balanced life. Today I have 54 posts in my Drafts folder in various stages of completion. Fifty-four! If I didn’t have a single new idea for a post, I could keep blogging every single day for almost two months on that!

But that wouldn’t be fun. And the main things that I want to get out of this blog are engagement, community and fun. If it’s not fun for me (and you), there’s no point. So here’s what I’d like to do from here on. It’s not a commitment, it’s ideas. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned, it’s that when it comes to blogging, ideas are far more useful;

  • I’d like to stick to about five posts a week. I’m tempted- by FSM am I tempted- to write every day. But writing long posts every day is very time and energy-consuming. I like putting a lot of research into my posts. Posting about five times a week gives me a day off and gives me space to go off and research things. The chances that I’ll stick to this are, er, minimal.. but i’ll try and keep any other posts short ‘n’ sweet. 
  • I love, love, love bringing other people into my blog. I have plans for two different interviews with amazing artists in the next month or so, as well as two wonderful guest posts from one of them in that To-Be-Edited pile. I would love to share more brilliant people with you, and to bring in new perspectives on the things that I talk about.
  • Posts that aren’t just writing. Making drawings, lists and the like is fun. I like posting things in a format that isn’t just walls of text like this is. I’ve been mostly stuck with writing over the past while since the death of my MacBook Pro stuck me to things that my wee Eee PC netbook can do. After Christmas, though, I’ll have a brand-new (second-hand, one careful lady owner) MBP to play with. I foresee oodles more pictures, a return to recipes, and some vlogging on top of it all. Suffice to say that I’m counting the days until I can get my mitts on that gorgeous MBP and start making things.

All in all? Although I didn’t make it to 50,000 words, NaBloPoMo was a massive success. I’m really proud of my 35 posts. I’ve loved diving headfirst into writing and communicating. At the end of it, I have oodles of ideas for making the Tea Cosy even more awesome than it is. And- for the first time I can remember- I can’t wait until January. Not bad, eh?

And You Lot? Thanks, all of you, for showing up, reading, commenting, and supporting me on my bloggly endeavours. Go give yourselves a hug from me.

 

Post-November Update
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