Friday, November 30, 2007

It Is Finished...

...the battle is over. It is finished. There'll be no more daily blogging (for now).

Anyone recognize that? (It's a take on an old Southern Baptist hymn, the church I as raised in until I escaped.)

So the final count on words for this month is 18,128. It fills up forty-one pages single spaced, but with the generous paragraph spacing that I am prone to in the blog. I also did an extra post on the 13th, which was a mistake. Oh well.

The goal for NaNoWriMo is 50,000 words, so I got about 1/3 of the way to that. There's no word count goal with NaBloPoMo. It's just about posting every day, even if it's just a picture or a word. One of these days I might attempt NaNoWriMo, but not any time soon. I'd have to cloister myself away and write a lot more each day, and my Thanksgiving plans don't allow for that. What I could possibly do is start five days early and take the five days during Thanksgiving off, which would totally be cheating. Plus, I think the momentum, especially during the last days is sort of a big deal. Then again, there's Fred to consider. He likes some attention every now and then. It's also been National Sweater Knitting Month (or NaNoSweMo). I thought I might do that, but there was a time crunch in terms of other projects I want to do.

When I was in Ohio, I was sitting at the computer one day trying to finish a piece so I could enter a contest I'd promised myself I would enter. Patty came through the room and said, "Writer's block?" I got kind of insulted. I said, "I can always write something. I'm just trying to make this good." (It was okay. I got it done. That's what's important. And I think my chances are good since I bet not that many people entered. Mostly I just wanted to make myself do it.) It's rare when I sit in front of the computer and have nothing to write.

So now I have the challenge of figuring out how I'm going to structure my blogging life post-NaBloPoMo. I'm thinking three to four times a week. I come up with enough stuff to do it every other day. There's a lot of strange stuff that goes on here that seems to me is worth writing about.

And here is my final reflection on the month. I'm really glad I did it. It was interesting to have to come up with something to write about every day. I'd hoped to do more Amsterdam-specific stuff, but it was what it was. Looking back on the posts for the month, it feels like some of them were so long ago. Time flies. I do like looking at the list of them. It takes away any sluggy feeling I had about how much I blog.

The month sort of feels like it's petering out. There's no big party here for the end of the blogging month. I know those NaNoWriMo people have big parties all over the world. Mostly what I want to do is put my feet up, watch a movie, eat something and knit. That's enough. Fred's out at the theater with friends. I need some alone time anyway. (I'd love to have him here. But I'm fine with him being gone.) It's been a rough week working and getting over my jet lag - and my bad self.

So hooray for me. I finished. Or in NaNoWriMo terms, "I won."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations!

Alastair