Scraping the Moss Off My Brain

Moss, algae and lichens grown on a boulder near the site of the Azalea Cascade in DeSoto state park near Fort Payne, Alabama. Azalea Cascade is seasonal and on this visit (in the Fall) it was mostly dried up with just a trickle of water coming down the rocks just to the right of the boulder (just out of the frame). In wetter times the cascade provides a mist that keeps this and nearby rocks moist and promotes the growth of the moss and algae. During this visit, however. there were more leaves falling than water. Copyright by WyoJones. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

I got an email about NaBloPoMo from BlogHer. What is it? Basically it is a big blog party. And an invitation to push yourself a little. To blog every day.

Whoa.

So far, on good weeks, I might manage 3x a week. (I went back to twice a week for summer/tush kicking.) And they want me to blog every day? In November? The month of Thanksgiving. A month with days. And life stuff. Book stuff. Stuff. Lots and lots of stuff.

I looked away. But I left the tab open in my browser. I kept going back and looking at it. Then looking away. But I didn’t close that dang tab. And it taunted me. November is also NaNoWriMo–a yearly event where writers all try to write 50,000 wds, possibly a whole book in 30 days. Just for the record, I will not be doing NaNoWriMo. Not ever. I wrote a book in 3 weeks once and it hosed me for months and months. It does not work well with my creative process. But…

Blogging. That’s not a novel. That’s about blog posts. So all day I looked at the tab. And wondered if I could do it. And then I saw the moss covered boulder photo in the hubs Flickr stream. And I thought, “Oh wow, that could be me.”

When was the last time I really pushed myself in a new direction? I told myself I push every time I start a new book. I put myself out there. But…while I’ve been blogging for a long time, I’ve pushed myself too hard. If I was serious about this blogging thing, then maybe I should scrape the moss off and commit to this event. Hang with some other bloggers. Hang with some great bloggers, actually.

I mentioned it to one of my daughters and she was like, you could so do this.

If you aren’t sure you want to do something, you should never mention it to your kids. The same kids you’ve encouraged to do hard things, to stretch themselves, to not get covered with moss.

Sigh.

I thought I was done with all that being a great example. I thought I could rest on my laurels.

Sigh again.

So here I am on Day 1. Me and my moss covered boulder. The boulder isn’t going to change this month. But I’m hoping that I will. I could use a little encouragement from my friends. So please stop by now and again. Leave a comment. Not only will you help me scrape the moss off my brain, but all comments are entered into my monthly drawing for an AnaBanana gift basket, which is covered with yummy and not moss. Winner will be announced in the first blog post of December. 🙂

I forgot to announce my gift basket winner for October! The winner is: Nancy Bowden!

Perilously, and a bit anxiously, yours,

When Pauline isn’t being a moss covered boulder, she writes novels of adventure and peril. And yes, she is aware of the irony. Usually she sends her characters into deadly peril in space, but recently she returned (fictionally) to New Orleans with a new series: The Big Uneasy. At this moment, the series has two installments. Relatively Risky released last March and “Family Treed” released last month. For more information about all her novels and short story collections, click on “books” or pop over to her website.