There are ways to work around things in life, always. NaBloPoMo is no exception. The words MO are tossed about when speaking of a criminal and his ways, but I allow it to take on a softer meaning when it's NaBloPoMo.
You get to lose your mind around NaBloPoMo. A month of blogging, and after two weeks of *behaving* I let everything go. If I'm inspired, motivated, turned on by a post somewhere, I hitch my wagon to that star. I become action-prone, another term borrowed from yet an unseemly world I've encountered on cable TV. (That one is from a hoarder's episode)
My latest trick of the trade to keep on producing for NaBloPoMo comes second hand, diluted from the original stellar posting by the ever upright Melisa Wells of Suburban Scrawl. After she posted "Turn to your lovely draft folder for ideas, bloggers!," Vikki Reich of Up Popped a Fox, took that bit of nablobeauty and slapped it into a post on her site that made all the sense in the world to me, because I'm like Vikki.
I don't use an editorial calendar, like Vikki.
When I sit down to type is when I find out what I'm going to post that day, like Vikki.
My drafts folder is 171 posts thick, 160 of them with the title "Untitled." These entries are dying embers of what may have been cosmic brilliance once upon a time.
Thanks to Melisa's pristine effort, and Vikki's reduction of advice to a do-able task, I present, unearthed and dusted from its "Once I was a good idea for a post!" state, my
Top 11 drafts folder entries:
1.) Teachers love to get toilet paper rolls
2.) Citizen Journalism
3.) My husband is just one among thousands
who suffer
4.) don't let your lips touch a spigot
5.) I have no interest
6.) I hang my head, with GUILT GUILT GUILT
7.) Dear Dr: let me congratulate you on
your opinion.
8.) Rap songs and curve balls
9.) The wrong side of the mountain
10.) Attack, stamina, and defense
11.) Genuinely penitent
I wish I would have written more. The suspense of what these were about is making the left side of my stomach hurt. Some go back to 2010 and there are no clues! In particular, if only I knew about #10. I am so in love with #10.
If anyone has suggestions for self hypnosis transportation to a time when I could have known what I was attacking, that I needed so much stamina for the defense of, please leave me a comment. Nothing will be considered too crazy.
I hope something works, because I really need a NaBloPoMo for tomorrow.
* * *
I'm writing about the Chicago Food Swap right now. Maybe you can twist that into something for tomorrow!
ReplyDeleteThis is exactly what my day needed: an evening spiked with laughter.
ReplyDeleteI'm dying to know what your husband was suffering from, so I may just invent that time machine. We need to take you back to retrieve that, for sure.
ReplyDeleteI have a draft titled "Hair" that only says "roller derby girls."
I love #10 and #11! If only we could remember. Someone suggested I look at the google key word searches that brought people to my blog. How "naked out of the shower flirting" lead someone to my blog is beyond my wildest imagination (well, not really). I've enjoyed reading your daily posts!
ReplyDeleteOh, and how about this as an idea that you might mull over here on the blog: I was reading BAD FEMINST today by Roxane Gay--interesting stuff, I tell you--as I sat at the dentist waiting for my kids' teeth to be cleaned, and she wrote a sentence about a woman who spends all her time trying to be beautiful, "as if through beauty she will find happiness." When I read that bit, I thought *immediately* of my mother. The emphasis my mother puts on looks definitely conflates looks with the ability to be happy. My mother thinks she's ugly and often said so when I was growing up. She also always thought she was fat. I look a great deal like my mother; ergo, I had a directly indirect message that I, too, was ugly and fat. Somehow, the stakes were really big when it came to looks, as good looks somehow meant that person had WON.
ReplyDeleteThis is a way of thinking my mom has always had, and it's one that it's taken me decades to defuse.
So: is there any message you got from your mother, good or bad, that it's taken you decades to neutralize?
Melisa: Hmmm, I can cover the Wisconsin Pork Growers Annual Banquet meeting
ReplyDeleteTruthofRuth:I love that you laughed. xo
Gina: I am going to lose my mind over #10!!
Jocelyn: I met her, oh yes I did. let me send you a picture.
Gina: that's another good blog post!
Toilet Paper Rolls FOREVER!
ReplyDeleteI want to post from you on that episode of hoarders. I so adore that show. So much pain, so much apparently unlivable but yet lovable, and so many reasons to clean my house immediately.
ReplyDeleteI just posted a total cheater's post in which I complained about the month-long challenge and claimed that I will probably quit tomorrow.
We all know I never will, but it sounded really good. ;-)
WORD. My drafts folder is never good for anything, except possibly weird poetry that reads like it was written by a crack addict.
ReplyDeleteJulie: help me out here , why do you like toilet paper rolls?
ReplyDeleteNaptime: I can't watch it anymore. It became tragic to me, but I was once addicted to it.
Biblio: Do a drafts folder post!
I am intrigued by #8!
ReplyDelete