NaNoWriMo – Get Good Ideas to Borrow for Blogging |  |
| NaNoWriMo – Get Good Ideas to Borrow for Blogging Posted: 08 Dec 2011 04:59 AM PST
Guest post by Enzo F. Cesario. As a blogger, you have to look for good ideas everywhere. Books, movies, other blogs, newspapers, articles online, articles offline, anecdotes from friends and family, the list can go on for ages. But did you know that getting ideas is not limited to seeking out ideas for content – that is, topics to write about? You can also look for structural ideas such as format or approach, or even ideas about the writing process itself. One place that came up with a very good idea is the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) movement. NaNo is an annual writing festival held in November each year. For 30 days the only goal of the participants is to write, until they reach 50,000 words or more. The polish doesn’t matter, all that matters is that 50,000 words of fiction, newly written, be finished by November 30th, with validations starting on the 25th. With such a deadline, there is a very real concern that the content can’t be edited – and this is in fact the point. The creator of NaNoWriMo, Chris Baty, calls it “shutting off your inner editor.” He explains that the inner editor is part of what kills so many writers in their writing process. It isn’t so much that they have writing block as that they look at what they’ve already written and either: A) decide it’s crap and give up out of disgust; or B) see how they can tweak it and focus on doing that, when they haven’t even finished writing the next chapter yet. By imposing a very strict deadline with high content demands, the contest encourages writers to completely give up the editing process. They simply must write, and write without editing the material, for 30 days. Editing can be done later, when people wish to attempt to publish their work, revise it, or otherwise adjust it at a future date. The focus of NaNo is simply the generation of content free of any fear that it might not be good enough, or any attempt to edit it into something other than the first draft that it should be. So what in the world does this have to do with blogging? Well, any blogger who has been at it for any length of time has probably experienced a similar issue. Rather than simply writing the content, bloggers get caught up in starting, restarting, revising, rewriting, and starting all over again on a number of posts. This process can do just as much sabotage for a blog’s creative content as it can for an aspiring young novelist who doubts his abilities and feels the need to edit as they go. So, if you find yourself suffering from chronic rewriting, I advise taking Chris Baty’s admonition – shut off your inner editor. Simply sit down with your topic and write a first draft, start to finish, without interruption. Decline to edit any part of it until you hit your assigned word count. Then take a break for half an hour, and only after the break is finished can you come back and start tweaking it. This approach has a few distinct advantages for the blogger. The very nature of blogging is that the content rarely goes on and on like a novel would. Most posts will generally fall between 200 and 1000 words, making it much easier to hit your first-draft goal than it is with a larger work. Also, the editing process itself will take a shorter time than editing a larger work — choosing to postpone the editing until the end can help you see all the issues at once and make the editing take up the very least amount of time, resulting in the fastest turnaround on the assignment possible. An additional idea from NaNo that has proven to be an outstanding success is the Writing Buddy system. Writing Buddies are simply fellow NaNo participants that various users flag as people of interest. Buddies communicate with one another, share plot ideas, discuss thorny writing issues such as writer’s block and plot holes, and challenge each other to Word Wars – short races to see who can generate the most content in a set time limit. Adopting a similar system is not a bad idea for any blogger. Networking, particularly through social media, is an important part of maintaining contacts with fellow writers, finding work, and getting thoughts on various leads and topics. While the exact relationship might change — I can’t think of too many cases a blogger would need to utilize a Word War — the basic idea remains a solid and good approach. As a festival celebrating the craft of writing in all its creative glory, NaNoWriMo has a lot to say about the writing process. Some of it is good, some of it bad, and nearly all of it is useful in some way or another. Take a visit to the site at some point and see what ideas they have to offer for you. Whether you choose to silence your inner editor or adopt a cadre of writing friends, take an idea that is useful to you, and use it to generate your blogging content. © 2011 TipsBlogger.com | Contact | Submit Guest Post | Blogging Forum |
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