Harvested at Random

Reed’s post reminded me that the Randomiser is probably the best thing about NaBloPoMo. Here is a list of blogs I like:

Un-bloggy blogs:

Sketch of the Day – a treat and a treasure – grown-up sketches by a grown-up person described with wit and posted every day.

Le Pen Quotidien – another daily drawing blog, less assured and established, but still worth clicking through.

Things I’m Grateful For – an unconsciously thought-provoking private blog which could almost be an exercise in narrative style; it makes no concessions for the reader, neither bothering to explain context nor trying to engage your emotions. Oddly compelling, though I should warn you that it includes animated smileys.

Can I sit with you – a collection of fictional or fictionalised pieces by different authors about the general awfulness of school; the bloggers intend publishing the best via Lulu. A productive use the blogosphere.

From this you’ll see I’m not very interested in diaries, pregnancy, lactation, the extreme cuteness of the writer’s blogspawn, their relationship with their darling husband, recipes, church-bases socialising, or their dating and social lives. Those blogs give pleasure to their authors and do me no harm, but I don’t drop by twice.

Two exceptions might prove to be:

Shelves in my mind – the sort of blog I’d like to write; short considered pieces which examine everyday life with thought and humour. The writer is an American mother in the UK who writes thoughtfully and unsentimentally about her life.

Dairy Daze – More interesting for the quirk of the situation (a city girl who’s now a dairy farmer) than for anything else. Engaging though, particularly if you are interested in rural life in the 21st century, which I am.

Other forms of blogging

While clicking through the NaBloPoMo randomizer I found a blogger who posts one photo relating to her family every day. As photos they were pretty mundane; the first page alone showed three different dinners cooking in pans on the top of the stove. But the idea is interesting. On searching, I’ve discovered that there is in fact a whole Project 365 dedicated to the idea of 365 self-portraits. I lack the stamina and the vanity for that.

However, I rather fancy the discipline of finding one thing worth looking at every day, and then finding a way of showing it which is worth sharing. I’m not going to do that this month, obviously, but I might do a personal BloPhoMo for a month next year.

Likewise, elsewhere on the internet I found a blog consisting of 365 43-word pen-portraits. That also appealed to me mightily.

So I am thinking of doing more themed stuff here next year. We’ve had informal themes, particularly the MMC and MTAS shite-fest, the brain-dump about questions, and of course Fantasy CEO. I like the idea of moving that on from an indulgence to a discipline.

In fact, this blog could do with some discipline altogether. Quite apart from anything else, the words “I” and “me” turn up here too often, so maybe a month of posting without them would do me good. I’d like to get rid of some of my other linguistic quirks: I’m altogether too fond of complex verb formations as you can see clearly in the first paragraph of this particular post, and when I come back to my posts I often find them breathless and – well – colloquial. And there’s another one – that use of “well” to mimic hesitant speech. Maybe I’ll take a month and focus more on form than content and expunge those mannerisms. Oh, and a month off would be nice. In fact, I suspect a month off would be essential. I could take a zen-like approach to blogging by not blogging. A NoBloPoMo in fact.

So NaBloPoMo and Project 365 may spawn all sorts of oddities here next year. I will however spare you a month of haiku. That’s guaranteed.