January 2, 2008
Wednesday

As you can see, there’s been some redecorating. The Holidailies logo next to the date is gone, replaced by the “National Just Read More Novels Month” logo. The idea was started, apparently on a whim in 2006, by a blogger known as “yellojkt,” who was parodying NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo. He calls NaJuReMoNoMo only a semi-parody because he really does want people to read more novels. He thinks January is a good time to do this because people want to pull back to more solitary pursuits after all the fa-la-la, and they’re flush with gift cards and gift books and should have no trouble reading one novel in thirty-one days.

I’m also displaying the logo for Blog 365, another keep writing idea presented by Kamen Lee, who mentioned it somewhere and suddenly had nearly 1000 participants. (I am Member #889.) And though it doesn’t have a logo, I also signed up for The Short Story Reading Challenge, Canadian writer Kate Sutherland’s effort to focus attention on the short story.

I posted 124 pieces to Markings in 2007, nearly half of them in November and December. This nonfiction work helps my fiction work. If Blog 365 can get me to double my 2007 production I will feel a sense of accomplishment.  The efforts to read more fiction and to talk about it publicly feeds Goal #3 of The Six Goals of a Quality Life, since a writer has to be a reader as well. And joining yet another “Na .. .” thing that is a parody of a parody and pasting its logo on my site reminds me not to take myself and my “blog” (a term I’ve pretty much given in to) too seriously.

That other logo, though, is not part of a self-deprecating or self-parodying effort. Hunger remains a very serious social concern for me, well-fed, overfed, beneficiary of so much abundance. The Hunger Site and the related “click to support” sites you find when you go there do good work. Why not give them a look, while you’re waiting for me to post something a little less “meta.” 

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