November is becoming the month for writers of all shapes and sizes. Literally and figuratively.

In November every year a bunch of writers take place in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge: write 50,000 fiction words in the month of November. I tried this in 2004 and, despite having previously written and completed seven novels (unpublished), came up short. Also, bought the book by the creator of NaNoWriMo, Chris Baty, and joined a bit in the NaNoWriMo forums. Every year I think about the NaNoWriMo fondly, it’s a great writing exercise. If you’re a fiction writer, published or unpublished, it’s worth checking out.

Now comes the idea to run National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo.com — hat tip to a strangled duck) concurrently with NaNoWriMo. The concept: post every day to your blog — no required word length — in the month of November. It’s not by the same folks as NaNoWriMo from what I can tell. They are using Ning for the social network platform surrounding NaBloPoMo.

Must admit, and this is only my own writer perspective, that I’m not as excited about NaBloPoMo as NaNoWriMo. Why not? The goal is less challenging writing on a blog without any monthly word count or genre requirement versus writing 50,000 words of fiction in a calendar month that has a holiday (Thanksgiving) and only 30 days. Heck, writing 50,000 words of anything that makes at least some sense in a single month is an achievement.

The NaTwiTweMo idea
The cynical voice anwers: how long before somebody comes up with a National Twitter Month (NaTwiTweMo) where the goal is to Twitter every day for a month? Don’t laugh too hard, if 50,000 characters was a goal in this hypothetical and fictional (as far as I know) NaTwiTweMo, that would be a mere 358 Twitter messages, or using the cornier term tweets with the full 140 characters over the course of a month.

140 characters x 358 tweets = 50,120 characters
358 tweets over 30 days = 12 tweets a day (rounded up) of full 140 characters

Let’s assume you’re not full on 140 characters with every Tweet, that’s maybe 15-20 tweets per day, every day in the month of November. I believe there are many Twitterers doing that right now.

Confession: I’m not being completely serious on the NaTwiTweMo thing, but if anybody wants to run with that idea, have at it. The domain is probably still available. Let’s get back to being serious.

A more challenging monthly blog goal
Writing 50,000 words on a blog and posting every day in the month of November would make the NaBloPoMo more challenging, but that’s not how NaBloPoMo rolls. Word length does not matter.

Hmm. Why couldn’t it be? Warning: navel gazing alert!

Curious, I looked over these blog archives to date to see how many months I’d reached 50,000 words. Had I ever done that? According to my TD Word Count plugin, yes, twice before: September 2005 with 53,103 words in 125 posts and then again in June 2006 with 51,591 words in 120 posts. Most words in a month in 2007 thus far has been May with 37,501 in 75 posts. My number of posts has decreased over the last year. The average number of words per post is actually higher, but the quantity of posts has decreased. Still averaging over a couple posts a day, but it’s been over a year since there has been more than 100 posts in a month published here (July 2006: 108 posts 47,045 words).

(Sidebar: looking at the plugin screenshot, I’m seeing a month sorting bug I need to sort out.)

Time to set a new single month word goal.

Goal: 53,104+ words in November 2007
Rather than suggesting blogging every day over the course of a month is easy — and hopefully that’s not how this is coming across because I don’t think it is — I am suggesting it is easier for me than writing 50,000 words of fiction in a month. But talk is cheap, right? So I’ve decided to challenge myself and have joined the NaBloPoMo challenge for next month.

I’m joining the 1,354 others taking the challenge of writing and posting at least one blog post every day in November 2007.

However, I am adding one additional goal for myself that is not required by the NaBloPoMo: beat my best personal word count at Hmm to date by posting at least 53,104 words.

I’m also considering a contest where readers can get involved and either cheer along with or jeer at me next month. It’s past time to do some sort of contest with one or more prizes here anyway and this sounds like it could be fun and engaging. Even if I don’t succeed with the writing goal, it will be a good writing exercise and hopefully a little interactive for readers. Readers who enjoy my longer, more pensive pieces, or enjoy a higher volume of posts with varying lengths should hopefully get treated to that in November if the goal is achieved.

Maybe I was too constrained by my past fiction writing experience instead of letting the words flow freely when I failed completing the 2004 NaNoWriMo challenge. In this blogging challenge, I won’t feel remotely as constrained however, 53,104 words is still an average of 1,770 words per day (rounded down). That’s not an unrealistic goal, but a good challenge.

I encourage fellow blogger readers to challenge themselves with some sort of writing goal in November 2007, either by joining NaNoWriMo or NaBloPoMo or just telling your readers: here’s my writing goal for November 2007 — and then charting your progress. One of the main goals behind National Novel Writing Month is to teach participants that the novel you’ve been saying you always wanted to write will never get written unless you sit down and stroke those keys.

Blogging is fun, but can be work too. Words used and time spent are both mechanisms by which we can judge progress. I’m not suggesting that by merely writing 50,000+ words in a month one is any better writer from a quality standpoint than somebody else who writes 5,000 words the same month. It’s possible the blogger who carefully vets and edits those 5,000 words will be more successful in the craft than the one writing 50,000. But in both cases there’s one important similarity: both writers are doing something.

When you stop and think about the difference between people who are successful versus those who aren’t, you can usually spot an abundance or lack of effort and activity (practice, practice, practice). Action versus words. We can sit around and talk about all the things we might have done or could have done or want to do in life — or could be out there spending time actually doing all of them. Checking them off a list. One. After. Another.

Action equals results while inaction equals decay and eventually death. When you’re staring down death in those final fleeting sands of time, how do you want to look back? As the person who had many wonderful unfulfilled dreams or someone who did everything in his/her power to make those dreams come true?

The future
Some year, health and spirit willing, I’d like to try that NaNoWriMo challenge again — and I will try my best to be victorious next time. Positive thinking, right? I have been working behind the scenes on a few fiction-oriented projects and that still remains an unfulfilled dream on the list. I’m sure readers here will be among the first to know if/when this dream is realized. Hopefully it’s not posthumously.

Lights, cameras, action.

• NaNoWriMo November 1 - 30, 2003: 50k words in 30 days
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• Get your creative juices flowing with Ficlets from AOL
• ‘Specially designed for comfortable reading’ er, not
• Test your senses