National Blog Posting Month, Social Media

Blog early, blog often: Finding things to write about

2 Comments

Works-for-Me WednesdayI’m participating in National Blog Posting Month, which means I have to come up with something to say here every day in November. I do post pretty frequently. Even so, it’s going to be a challenge to come up with something interesting to write every day. (Disclaimer: There’s no way I’ll come up with something interesting every day. But I will post something.)

Writing regularly is a good idea even if you aren’t participating in NaBloPoMo. For me, it helps me feel like I’m engaged in a world outside of peanut butter and fingerpainting. It also keeps my brain a little bit sharper, I NaBloPoMo 2010think. (Except for when I’m taking cold medicine. Like, say, right now. Then I write things like “little bitter sharper,” which is sometimes accurate, too.)

I find that it helps to follow a schedule with my blog posting, and there are a lot of meme-type themes that make that really easy. Here, for example, I regularly do Menu Plan Monday and Works for Me Wednesday. The menu-planning is something I do anyway, and it’s really easy to type that up and share it here (even if it isn’t maybe the most fascinating thing). The “works for me” posts tend to be a little more difficult, because they require more thought. But they have made me pay more attention to what I’m doing on a daily basis in an effort to try to notice things that might be making my life easier. (I feel like that didn’t make much sense. Alka-Seltzer cold, take me away!) I also try to do a little rundown on our homeschooling week on Saturdays. The Daily Meme has a bunch of other blogging memes listed.

Beyond those regularly scheduled posts, I tend to just blather about things. (As I’m sure those of you who are regular readers have noticed.) I’m OK with that, but I might need more focus in November. So I’ve found a few writing-prompt sites that I plan to mine for NaBloPoMo. Maybe you’ll find them helpful, too.

  • Try Creative Writing focuses on prompts for creative writing, which absolutely is applicable to writing a blog. Some of it is clearly fiction-writing stuff, but there’s a lot of personal-experience fodder there, too.
  • The Write Prompts offers a new prompt every day, which would be a clear and simple way to do NaBloPoMo. They do the theme-days thing, too. Wednesdays are all about poetry, for example, and Tuesdays focus on discussing a provided image (much like what Casey and her friend are doing at YouSeeItDifferentlyThan.Me, but on a Internet-wide scale.)
  • Marelisa has put together a list of 119 journal prompts. I especially like the “100 Things I Love” section, in which she suggests subtopics of things like “10 People I Love” or “10 Restaurants I Love.” That would make for a nice series.

    • Do you have a go-to inspiration for writing?

    blessings, National Blog Posting Month

    Sixteen things I like

    4 Comments
    1. My husband. I’ve known him for about 20 years. We’ve been married for 9 years, 8 months and 30 days. And I still find him delightful.

    2. The Saturday morning family cuddle, in which the kids pile in to our bed and watch cartoons while Rockford and I continue to doze.

      3. NaBloPoMo 2010

    3. Most of Wes Anderson’s movies. Especially “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox.”

    4. Ice cream.

    5. The weather these days. It’s cool but not cold. Which leads me to:

    6. Comfy sweatshirts.

    7. Marsha T. Cat, particularly the way she likes to cuddle.

    8. Cuddling.

    9. Books that make me cry.

    10. Books that make me laugh.

    11. The Internet.

    12. Meeting some of the nice people in the internet.


    13. Bill Murray’s face.

    14. Pizza.


    15. My family. All of them. Even my in-laws. They’re all terrific.


    16. The guy at church who plays the drums so joyously that you can’t help but smile.
    menu plan Monday, National Blog Posting Month

    A to-do list for the first of November

    1 Comment

    NaBloPoMo 2010

    • Laundry
    • Homeschool
    • Write post (first day of NaBloPoMo!)
    • Make menu plan for this week
    • Start NaNoWriMo

    Is it just me, or did November get here awfully quickly this year? I think we may have accidentally skipped a week of October. Not that I want to go back, necessarily. I love November. It’s extreme birthday season around ButterscotchSundae headquarters. In first seven days of November, we celebrate four birthdays: Mine, my sister-in-law’s, my dad’s and then Pete’s. And then, of course, there’s National Blog Posting Month, National Novel Writing Month and Thankgiving, and I plan to participate in all three. I’m pretty sure I can complete NaBloPoMo again, and I know I’m a champion at eating Thanksgiving dinner. But I’m not sure about NaNoWriMo. I’m going to give it a shot at least for a week or so.

    I am aware that Thanksgiving isn’t November’s only meal. Here’s what we’ll be eating this week:

    Monday: Breakfast for dinner

    This will be eggs, veggie sausages and toast. It’s always a hit, which is why we have it at least one night most weeks.
    Menu Plan Monday

    Tuesday: Macaroni & cheese

    I was going to make this from scratch, but then Target had the blue box on sale for 90 cents.

    Wednesday: Chicken sausages and fries

    I never actually made this last week, so here it is again!

    Thursday: Pizza

    What!?! Pizza on Thursday? But Friday’s pizza night! I know. But here’s the thing: I’ll be turning 32 on Thursday, which naturally means that we’re going to have a wild and crazy day. So Pizza Thursday it is.

    Friday: OK, fine. Pizza Thursday isn’t just because it’s my birthday. We’re going to my sister-in-law’s for dinner on Friday.

    In other news, my children are playing a game in which they’re hunting snakes and then eating them. For the record: I do not enjoy all the shouting about snakes.