NaBloPoMo Starts Today

So, the question is: will I stick with it? Will I actually be able to post every single day? Your guess is as good as mine. If I were a betting woman, though, I'd say the odds are pretty high that I won't. After all, I have yet to complete any Challenge in the time frame in which it is given. I haven't even been able to complete the science book challenge, which only involved reading and posting on three books this year. I've read one book. I'm halfway through my second (loving it, but it's been slow reading). In fairness to me, I read math and science manuscripts and articles all day long for work, so it isn't exactly like I'm not reading science. However, I did choose three books to read for this challenge, and I was almost certain I'd have had all three read long before now. I will finish this challenge, but at this point, I'm pretty sure the third book will have to wait till next year.

Then there's the Soup's On! Challenge. I've read three of the five cookbooks I said I was going to read. I've posted on two of them. (The third, quite obviously, will be a post for this month.) The other two books, huge tomes that each would take me a year to read, inspire the "What was I thinking?" thought bubble to float above my head every time I look at them.

Writing is different, though. I already write every day. I just don't necessarily write blog posts every day. And I haven't committed myself to writing about anything in particular. This should be something I can do. If I don't post every day, though, I'm sure I will have some really good excuses, excuses that will make great blog posts. In fact, I've already got an excuse. I'm not going to be posting on Sundays. Sundays are supposed to be my days to "unplug." I try not to turn on the computer unless I've had some other day during the week in which I didn't turn on the computer (like I was stuck in an airport all day on Saturday or something) or I'm off at a conference and am basically working all weekend. I had recently decided to recommit myself to "unplugged Sundays," because I'd found I was getting back into the habit of turning on the computer on Sundays. NABloPoMo would be a very good excuse to ignore that new commitment, but I think I need the discipline of staying away from the computer more than I need the discipline of posting every day.

I might try writing two posts on Saturdays and relying on blogger to listen to my command to publish my second post on Sunday, but blogger is very unreliable, so chances are, this won't work very well. We'll see...

Meanwhile, welcome aboard this crazy ride during this crazy month. I can guarantee two things or your money back: 1. Mondays will be devoted to song lyrics (isn't it fortuitous that I happened to come up with that idea just before I decided I'd give NaBloPoMo a go this year?), and 2. thanks to a suggestion from Mandarine (who really should be King of the World. He's always got such great suggestions), I will be posting segments from an old ghost story that I pulled out from the depths of a cobweb-encrusted file in the basement of the old laptop's hard drive. Who knows? If the ghosts decide to cooperate, the first segment of that might even show up tomorrow while I'm off reading and hiking, completely ignoring the computer.