Remembering the first NaBloPoMo
About a year ago I stumbled upon a photo of a friend that died several years previously. She was driving early in the morning with her son in the back of the car, and left the road. Nobody ever found out what happened. She died at the scene. I remember finding out the next day when it hit the social networks, and scratched through the local news reports on the internet. I still think about her from time to time. Her name was Lisa.
I “discovered” her while taking part in “National Blog Posting Month” (NaBloPoMo) in 2006. “National Novel Writing Month” (NaNoWriMo) had been running for several years already, and lots of us had failed spectacularly at itand then Eden Kennedy came up with the bright idea of posting something to our blogs every day throughout November instead. It sounded do-able. It seems funny, looking back 9 years later, that posting something to the internet once a day was any sort of stretch at allmost of the people I now know at Twitter or Tumblr post several times a day now without giving it a second thought.
Remembering Lisa got me thinking about the other people I met during November 2006I began wondering what they are doingif they still write. I dug out some of the archives to the old blog, and re-discovered the thoughts I had recorded while crossing the finish line;
We opened a slice of our lives to each other and forged unlikely friendships spanning thousands of miles. We will remember November.
We did remember Novembersome of us for years. I still read two blogs that I discovered in 2006Sarah, and Victoriawe became unlikely friends. There are of course others that have stopped writing over the years, but we are still in touch, and still write random emails to each other as you might with distant family.
November is approaching once more, and I find myself wondering about taking part. I can't help feeling that re-living past adventures never quite works thoughNaBloPoMo happened at a different time, and bloggers were different people back then. The social internet had not exploded across the landscapeTwitter and Tumblr didn't existmuch of the content published by the likes of you and me was fairly high qualitycurated posts wondering about life, the universe, and everything else.
These days everything seems to have an anglea pitcha niche. Those of us writing about daily life for the fun of it seem to have become a rare breed. NaBloPoMo itself has even been sold as a piece of propertyowned by BlogHer, and run all year round. It reminds me of the Dash quote from the Incredibles”if every month is special, then no month is special”.
Maybe I just need to writeand not worry about taking part in any faux community endeavours. Maybe I need to stop thinking, and just write. There's a voice on my shoulder though – a voice whispering “if you write 1600 words a day, you can complete NaNoWriMo too”...