What #BlogLikeCrazy Is and Why I'm Doing It

[image description: a photo of a desk with a white lamp, typewriter, sunflower in a vase, and stack of notebooks.]

You probably know November is National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo. (Good luck to everyone participating this year!) But did you also know it’s #BlogLikeCrazy month?

I’ve been a part of See Jane Write, a women’s writing organization that started in my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, but is now international. And thank goodness, since I’m now one of the non-Birmingham members. I joined in 2011 and Javacia, the founder, started encouraging us to publish a blog post a day every day in November––like the blogger’s equivalent to NaNoWriMo.

Every year I’d think about it, then talk myself out of it for one reason or another. During the years I was in college, I was too swamped with work and study. In the years after college, I was swamped with work and trying to build my creative career. A couple of years I did NaNoWriMo instead. Before I knew it, years had passed and I’d never blogged like crazy.

Part of it is also that I’m not super into challenges. I’ve never formally trained for a running event. I haven’t entered a writing contest in years. If you invite me to a costume party, I’m probably just going to show up in an exaggerated version of something pulled from my closet, if I dress up at all. (I was Velma from Scooby-Doo for Halloween last year. Mr. Off the Beaten Shelf was Shaggy. The only thing we actually bought was a Scooby doll.) It’s just not my thing.

But 2020 has shaken up pretty much everything else about my life and as it gets colder social distance yard hangs are going to be even less frequent, so why not blog like crazy this year? Plus, I can’t use work stress as an excuse since I’m my own boss now. My new boss is great! We get along swimmingly!

So yeah, I’m going to be posting a blog post every day for the rest of the month. That’s obviously way more than my usual posting schedule of weekly, so I wanted to give you a heads up. But don’t think I’m just going to be posting willy nilly––I’ve had a couple of weeks to prepare and I’ve got a lot of good stuff headed your way.

And if you’re a blogger who wants to do #BlogLikeCrazy, please do! Use the hashtag and join the others of us participating in the See Jane Write Network Facebook group. (Trans folks, nonbinary folks, and dudes are welcome to participate too!)

Cheers to day 1 and I’ll be back tomorrow and every day for the rest of the month. Stay tuned!