Blogaday: A break with tradition

Not committing to my usual tradition of Blogaday this year onaccounta all the stuff I gots to do. I do intend to try to post more often in November than I have in other months of this year though. 

I have tried to increase postings year-over-year here, but 2010 will kill that trend. A little sad about that, but I'm sure valuable lessons will be learned from this, whatever those are.

Blogaday 2009 Wrap-up

Another Blogaday ends. Time for the wordy wrap-up!

• This year, I did 61 days instead of the previous 30. I have gone into this before with about 2 weeks of semi-prepared content with the expectation that I'd get back to the rest of it later. This time, those 2 weeks were 25% of the total content instead of 50%, so mid-November left me with some head scratching.
  
• The head scratching point is where the magic happens. Not saying that was the best content, but that's where I have to start thinking and stop coasting.
• "Start thinking and stop coasting" should be tattooed on my arm or something.
• Will Rogers used to write a daily newspaper column. He wrote it daily, in the field, and he made it funny. For most other humans, an essay a day is hard work. After my realization that I'm not built up to write an original piece of polished thought every day, I started posting pithy stuff, some that could have just been Twitter fodder. That was okay too.
• I still prefer essays here.
  
• It's actually not hard to think up something to put on a blog every day. I'm walking around thinking alla time. What's hard is noting that something I'm thinking could be put on a blog. The blog has to occupy a balcony seat in your head. I imagine there's a list of things in your head that you compare new experiences to, that you use to contextualize experience. A blog just has to make it onto that list.
• I missed a day in late November again. One of these years I'm going to try not to miss a day.

I'm also trying to top last year's post count, so I'll probably post more in December. It's Advent again, and Art Shop is this Friday -- come by if you're in Philadelphia! -- so I'll have things to talk about. Peace out, blogaday bitches.

Cheating at Internet

I have written things this week, and been unhappy with them, and so shelved them to work on later, a typical ploy.

But simmering doesn't become a daily schedule. I've wound up back-dating things two days later, still dissatisfied. This is not how you do daily content, it's how you lie to historians. Back to work today, now with less ambition!

Blogaday 2009 -- Now!

Blogaday has become a yearly phenomenon here at QT. On some level, I'd prefer Blogaday to be perennial rather than annual. But I collapse under pressure.

Instead, I slide challenges to myself casually, leisurely. If I were to direct myself to begin writing on my blog every day, I would fold like an accordion. However, if I conduct a series of increasingly demanding "experiments" on myself, I come closer to achieving whatever goal I'm actually after. My mind balks at conquering the mountain, but clambers happily if it thinks we're just scaling to take in the view. I do not understand it, but it is so.

This is all my roundabout introduction to Blogaday 2009 -- the 60-day trial! In previous years, Blogaday was a November occurrence, my nonfiction response to NaNoWriMo. In just 3 years though, it's become its own animal, a modest self-experiment with discipline, consistency, and composition.

This year I'm experimenting with doubling the length. Please, stop back every day for the next two months. I will strive to be interesting! And hope in your good nature when I am not.

BlogaDay 2008 wrapup

My second (what appears to be) annual BlogaDay sprint is over with a resounding "eh." I skipped a day just like last year, which is sort of interesting. But otherwise, I hit my marks, delivered original content when I had it, and commentary when I didn't.

The Look
Readership was up this year by a 6.5% smidge (click for bigger)...


...but commentership was way, way down: 8 this year vs. 19 last year.

The Feel
This year was not nearly as much of a what-the-hell-will-I-do-today? thrilllride. (3 Ls for extra thrilll.) Flexible dating in blogger combined with greater mental preparedness led to a more predictable, stately proceeding.

I'm still trying to decide whether I've got a problem with that. On one hand, it's good. Competence, confidence, preparation -- these are all good, and it should be no surprise or disappointment that a second (third, if you count May's abortive attempt) run through goes more smoothly than the first.

But on the other hand, where's the wahoo in a well-ordered proceeding? There's still discovery in the process, but it's all so much more... staid. I'm trying to wriggle out of self-restraints here, and that didn't happen to my satisfaction.

I also don't have the momentum I had after last year. Then, if I hadn't chosen to stop, I would have stayed in the groove. I might have BlogaDayed throughout the year! Today, I'm a little glad it's over, so I don't have to keep up with it for a while.

The Conclusion
Hell if I know. Thanks for reading, though!

Dread borne from editing

How does one "loosen up"? I hear you humans use this phrase, but I do not understand it. I am tight. Not like a virgin, like a spinster.

I think one time a long time ago I made things up and wrote them down and people told me I was a "good" writer, but circumstance and happenstance have led me to this place where I am a better critic than creator, and that must have its charms, but I'm missing them right this second.

The search for discipline, for control, has led me to this place where I know grammar, but don't have anything to put in it. This is not writer's block, this is "Oh my fuck, I've spent my life becoming an editor, not a writer, I didn't mean to do that, FUCK."

But the viscera of that horror doesn't shock long enough to drive me to change. And by now, halfway through life, should I even bother trying to shore up weakness any more? Do I just accept what I've got and play to strength?

Oh BlogaDay. You lead me to despair. I hope it's redemptive.

BlogaDay Dos

BlogaDay 2007 was a success in the sense that it encouraged consistent readership, and also, consistent writership.

Unflummoxed success is rare enough that I like to build on it when I find it. So for 2008, I present an all-new BlogaDay. Visit Quickthinking every day in November to see what thing I think.

Posts will not be mere one-liner links to something on the Internet that someone else went to the trouble of creating, but will contain original thoughts and opinions, developed into short paragraphs. Similar to real writing!

Also new for 2008: Blogger supports scheduled posts! Via the miracle of science, expect updates each new day, even if I am too drunk to press buttons.

Furthermore, if any of you reading this are also bloggers, feel free to join the BlogaDay movement by writing a new, original post every day in November. We will be doing it together, only very far apart! Leave me a comment with your blog address if you're in.

It all starts tomorrow! November 1! Here is a brief excerpt from tomorrow's post:

"the"

May Linkdump

Mang, whatever even happened to my BlogaDay sprint?

I've had the last week and a half off from the day job, working on freelance, and motivation took its own little holiday. Maybe reposting interesting things isn't as compelling to me as creating original content? I don't know, I just made that up. That might not be true at all.

Here are some links I was going to put in daily posts, but didn't:

Half the Universe's Missing Matter Found
Becoming one with the universe just got 50% easier.

Buffet Says We're in for a Long, Deep Recession
In recovery from a long, deep obsession.

The Phoenix Mars Lander Twitter Feed
Hey, MarsPhoenix, we don't care what you had for breakfast.

Brief Karen Allen story Following the Latest Indiana Jones Premiere

After dessert, 10-year-old Flynn looked up from his chocolate cake and offered Ms. Allen an unsolicited review of the film. “The funny thing about the movie is that you punch him and then you kiss him,” he said.

“Well, that’s love,” Ms. Allen said.

BlogaDay: Repost Month

I forgot to mention, I'm doing BlogaDay again this month, trying to post at least once a day for all of May.

I'm changing the rules, because I'm not bothering with all-original content this month. Many Mayposts will be pointers to things I found other places, with little or no commentary.

Posting more, saying less. It's like conservation of energy, only with teleology.

Speaking of energy, here's today's link:

We might be able to get biofuels from a microbe that we don't have to kill in the process, and that can live in seawater.

Go microbes!

BlogaDay

I have ideas for posts allatime, but mostly I'm all eloquent and shit when I'm driving, which is possibly the worst time to be that way, unless you count being in secret prison for crimes nobody will charge you with. I suppose that's a worse time to try to write down your clever little thoughts.

Point being that November is rapidly becoming National [Accomplish Something] Month. Novels or operas or giant bas relief sculptures (NaBaReSculMo). As we all know, by the time something's been properly parodied, the original phenomenon is dying. And by the time I get around to parodying it, you're looking at faded daguerreotypes of the original phenomenon, wondering why no one ever smiled back then.

ALL YOUR DAGUERREOTYPES ARE BELONG TO US.

But I'm doing it anyway, my own little dog-and-pony variation of NaNoWriMo. All November long, I'm posting here every day. It's called BlogaDay.

I just made this up. Don't look for a BlogaDay signup site and t-shirts and freaking podcasts. Although if you send me $30, I'll make an awesome BlogaDay t-shirt for you.

The main reason I'm doing this is I'd really like to break out of the killing habit of making sure that what I have to say is well-researched and original before I post it. Those sound like good criteria, but I never write anything doing that.

So November? In November? I'm writing something every day here. It might just be a repost of whatever I saw that day at Neatorama, but damn the photon torpedos.

For the love of Christmas, I just spent 4 minutes trying to find a Klingon translation of the word "damn" for a joke that approximately zero people will get. This is what I have to contend with. This is why I only post once every locust year.

So. Every day. Something. I will still try to be clever or interesting, but really, you'll just have to smile politely when I'm not. Ready? Go.