NAtional BLAtant PLUgging MOnth

November is coming and to thousands of bloggers and other people that like to tickle the keyboard, it’s also National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo. I’ve poked gentle fun at this exercise in mass delusion before, but I try not to ridicule it too much. Particularly since many of my readers or lurkers probably participate. Mostly my disdain is a large bowl of sour grapes, since I’m not sure I have a novel in me, and definitely not one that would only take thirty days to write.

I’ve even run into a few real life NaNoWriMo “winners”. Admittedly, the Neil Gaiman autograph line doesn’t count as a random cross-section, but clearly a lot of people do it. If you are let me know either in the comments or on your own blog and I will provide moral support.

I created my own alternative called National Just Read More Novels. In January of each year, participants read at least one novel as opposed to a memoir or non-fiction book. It’s easy and fun and was the inspiration for my monthly BooksFirst feature.




While randomly surfing other blogs, I ran into someone with a button in their sidebar for NaBloPoMo. Wanting to keep up with the state of the art in NaMoWriMo parody sites, I checked it out. It’s a blogging sub-community called National Blog Posting Month, obviously dedicated to posting daily for one month. I have always envied daily bloggers like Blogography. A good part of their success is through pure determination. I can’t admit it’s because they’re much better writers than me (even though it’s true) because that would be too discouraging.

Besides with all the work I’ve been putting into Dowd Report, I’m posting anywhere between 6 and 8 times a week anyways, just not all in the same place. I may end up cross-posting a little and I have been holding back some quick and easy memes to use as filler. Feel free to join the ride.