The Epic Month of Posts

I thought I would begin this post by telling you all the story of Nano 2011. For me, of course.  I'm sure there were a million story's during nano 2011.  Anyway, this is my story of Nano 2011.

It was my second year of Nano, and my first year had gone relatively well.  (Okay, so I tripled the goal for the month...at the time I had absolutely no idea that I was even capable of such a thing.  Who knew.)  Anyway, as it was my second year and had managed to get so many words, I decided I was going to up that goal.  Just by a little bit, and I decided to set it at 200k words.

So, I was on about day three, and I had already written 30k words.  I was ahead of the game, and pretty happy with my progress thus far.  Then I started talking to one of my nano friends online.  She had decided that her goal that year was to beat me, and she already had 20k.

I'm told that this was the point where I overreacted.  I disagree.  I think what I did was perfectly rational, but I suppose I have to concede to the majority.

At this point, she was only 10k behind me, and I might be just slightly competitive, so I decided right then and there that 10k a day wasn't so bad, and I could keep that up for the entire month and write 300k.

I did it.  The girl who got me to raise my goal, she didn't even make the original 200k.  But it was a great month, and it's going to be something that I'm repeating this year.

So why am I telling you this now when nano hasn't even started?  Because of what else I did during Nano 2011 that will also be happening this year.

A friend of mine (not the same girl that managed to get me to write 300k words...) told me about a week before Nano started that she was going to write a blog post a day during the month of November.  I scoffed at her and told her she was crazy (I had only written about five blog posts total at this point).  Then I decided I was going to join her.

I didn't quite make it.  I ended up missing two days, and not all of it was good (more than a couple days was nothing more than 'here's my word count, I'm going to bed) but it was what really got this blog started.  It was because of those 30 days that I even considered getting the posts on a schedule of sorts.

Of course, last years we didn't have any rules.  This year we have a couple:

1) The post must be up on your site before midnight in whatever time zone you happen to be in.

2) All blog posts must be a minimum of 50 words to be considered a post (yes, this is short, but we might just up this count next year.)

This year we're also inviting other people to join us in our blogging efforts.  I'm keeping a list of all those involved on the sidebar on my site, and B. A. Matthews is doing the same.  So you can follow anyone whose going to be posting a blog a day and see who actually manages it.

Or you can sign up for it yourself, either by commenting on this post, contacting me via twitter (@DanniM86) or talking to B. A. Matthews.

We would also appreciate anyone who would like to spread the word.  I'm calling it the Epic Month of Posts, but feel free to come up with your own names for it.

I'm excited for this year (as I've upped my goal to 320k of my own free will, rather than being goaded in to it), and I can't wait to see the posts that come out of it.  I hope that we get a few of you to join, because it's going to be great!