November Madness
Rebecca October 6th, 2007
Just when you thought November was a dreary time of year, a rainy, dark shoulder season without any joy other than the consumption of turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes on the third Thursday of the month, there are three great competitions on the Internet that might change your mind.
The granddaddy of them all is NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month. Participants have all of November in which to write the Great American Novel*. However, I hear they’ll accept any honest effort. I don’t think that’s fair. I hear it took Fitzgerald only three weeks to knock out The Great Gatsby, and that included time spent away from the typewriter mixing Zelda’s cocktails.
If you like to set your sights a little lower, Matthew at Defective Yeti has created NaNoReMo, National Novel Reading Month. Instead of blithely jotting down the Great American Novel in thirty days, you actually get to read someone else’s attempt and participate in a near-daily discussion. Alright, I guess “attempt” isn’t the right word. It’s not like I’ve ever written anything like Lolita on my own blog.
And speaking of blogs, I’ve saved the best for last: NaBloPoMo. Eden’s National Blog Posting Month attracts hundreds, perhaps thousands of participants, including Mathew and me. We made it all the way through last year. However, I think we were just phoning it in by the middle of November. All I’ve got to say is thank goodness for You Tube. Can we do it again? Wait and see, or better yet, post every single day on your own damn blog and see how hard it is. As an inducement, we’re offering our own prize this year in the random drawing for winners, a jar of my homemade raspberry jam.
I even picked the raspberries myself, that’s how fucking hardcore I am. If you’re leery of “Internet friend” food, don’t worry. I’ve won numerous ribbons, including Best in Show, for my jams and jellies (and my pies, too) at the Western Montana Fair.
*I’m currently reading William Faulkner’s Absalom! Absalom! It’s my book club’s October selection. I would have given up on it long ago (oh, say, 100 pages back) were it not for the time I spent during the last meeting telling everyone I hadn’t read Faulkner since college and, nearly twenty years later, I would give him another chance. I’m sucking it up, keeping my promise, and reading it to the bitter end. However, I’d really love to write an open letter to Bill. It would be short and sweet:
You jerk. Why can’t you write a straightforward sentence that doesn’t make the reader totally lose track of the plot? People who claim you’re a great writer probably say the same thing about James Joyce. They’re full of shit.
Yours truly,
Rebecca
P.S. Hey, congratulations on that Nobel Prize.
- Links , Msc. , Other Sites , Reading
- Comments(16)
Tempted to enter NaBloPoMo, if only to see how you’d deal with sending a jar of jam across the Atlantic.
But I’m scared I’d either hold onto stuff from now until then, write meaningless stuff about “things my pet did today”, or else just give up in a crumpled heap on or around the 12th.
Must. Have. Jam.
You should both enter! Jammy goodness might just come your way, though in Phil’s case it might cost $50 to ship it across the ocean.
You’d really be surprised at the posts you pull out of your ass during NaBloPoMo. I surprised myself last year, and actually did some really good (or at the very least, coherent) stuff by the end.
oooooo! raspberry jam. i love that stuff! can i buy a jar and have it shipped to me? forget the blogging stuff, i want jam now!
Now now, or just now?
I’d be happy to ship a jar to you. What price desire?
And if I actually am pulling posts out of my ass, the last thing I’ll want to do is….oh, never mind.
Go ahead. Wipe them on the World Wide Toilet Paper…er, Web.
i’m not able to find contact info for you on this site (or i’m just stupid) so drop me a email at tim@blackcore.com and we’ll work out shipping details for that jar of red goodness…
Aye aye, Captain!
you’re not stupid, tim - there isn’t any listed in an obvious place. the only email address i have listed - in the about - is auto-deleted even.
We don’t like to talk to people, really.
this is just court ordered community service
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