30 Days of Nights

     30 Days of Night, awesome vampire flick

not to be confused with this post, but I kind of know how this guy feels

     Hurray, today is the last day of NaBloPoMo for November. I did it-insert small happy dance. No prizes for me or my inspiring blogger Jennifer over at Just Jennifer. (I read about the contest over there and have followed along with her month of posts.) I guess we will just have to accept blogging as its own reward. (although a short inspirational email from the coordinators wouldn't be unappreciated)

     What to say about the experience?

     I was a little surprised how easy it was. Other than a few tense moments last night trying to publish my post, Blogger ate it twice???, writing everyday was a breeze. No crushing writer's block. I went through most of the month with 5 or 6 posts in draft. Having ideas has never been my problem.

     I finally learned how to properly use the scheduling button. Small feats of technical prowess.

     I completely enjoyed writing everyday. Rather than running out of ideas, the more I wrote, read, browsed, the more things just poured out of my poor over stimulated brain. I had a lot of fun with the Perils of Paul, Sweet Saturday and Savoury Sunday, finally got to do some of the blogging and family research posts I wanted and followed along with my cousin's Tuesday Coffee Chat. Throw in a few others, the SOC post being my favourite, and it was done. I have ideas for at least another month of posts. But.....

     I had no idea how much time it would take. I like to write, pen and paper write. Put a keyboard in front of me and all of a sudden things slow right down.... to a crawl. My nights for the last month have been taken up putting these grand ideas down. It represents hours and hours and hours of time. I've never been one of those jot down an awesome post in 15 minutes kind.

     I write, spellcheck, curse Blogger's version of spellcheck because it really isn't spellchecking English as I know it, edit, cut, copy and paste that part over to here so it makes more sense, expand on that, re read then remove that because now the post is just getting way too long, preview, save as draft, then start all over again tomorrow before I actually publish or schedule to publish. I blame past high school and university profs for instilling essay writing skills so deeply in my brain.

     Thank God I don't, as of yet, use any of the social media to push my blog. I don't tweet, stumble, link or any thing else or I would be sitting in front of my computer well into the new year.

     Throw in reading other people's posts, dropping a comment here and there and all of a sudden enormous chunks of my night are just gone. This whole month has just flown by. My house looks like a hurricane swept through it, there is laundry to do, my recipe files have to be resorted after an unfortunate clumsy incident, Christmas decorating to be done, holiday baking not even started yet, no shopping for holiday baking, over 300 family emails to go through to sort out family data and pictures, 70 recipe emails to re write and eventually post and on and on and on. Strangely, life did not pause so I could take the month off and write. Damn.

     I would love to write for a living, doing this has re affirmed that for me. I don't so unfortunately real life has got to re assert itself. I've got a bunch of catching up to do. Until Toronto goes through 30 days of night like Barrow (minus the vampire attack). I'm going to have to take a bit of a break and cut back on my online time. I'll miss it though. First thing on the adgenda, a night of beer and bad television.

      How do you find the time to do your blog posts?