Oct 28, 2015 / General Advice & Pro Tips

Making it Through NaBloPoMo

Thirty straight days of blogging?! You can do it — with a few post ideas, a couple of tips, and the support of thousands of other bloggers.

It’s almost November, the biggest month of the year for daily writing and blogging challenges — you know, the ones with names that sound like chemical formulas. There’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), National Non-Fiction Writing Month (NaNonFiWriMo), National Playwriting Month (NaPlWriMo), a month-long drawing challenge, (NaNoDrawMo), and their blogging counterpart, National Blog Posting Month, or NaBloPoMo.

nablopomo_heroNaBloPoMo challenges you to publish a blog post every single day in November. There’s a huge community of participating bloggers, and the event’s organizers, BlogHer, maintain a blogroll and offer support, motivation, and prizes. It’s a great way to meet new bloggers, create a blogging habit, and try new things…

… but we know it’s daunting, and the excitement of Day One seems to wane a bit by Day Seventeen. That’s what we’re here for! The post ideas, resources, and tips below will have your fingers flying over the keyboard on Day Thirty and beyond.

When you need a boost for the day

  • Do a bit of advance planning — make yourself a prompt box, a box (or a jar, or a hat) filled with slips of paper on which you’ve written post ideas, words, and quotes. When you need a jolt, pull out a slip and see where it takes you.
  • Try something new — use a new post format, insert a new kind of media, or write in a different style. Normally write non-fiction? Try a poem or a short story. Use Instagram? Embed some of your shots into a post. Take the opportunity to push yourself, and you’ll learn things that will help you blog more and better in the longer run.
  • Plagiarize yourself! Revisit comments you’ve made on other blogs — you can find them right in your Reader. Something about the post you read inspired you to say something, so build on that.
  • Find creative ways to use drafts you’ve abandoned. Finish a post you started months ago and forgot about. Create poetry with phrases pulled from drafts. Give old ideas new life.

When the well of inspiration is dry as a bone

Writing in response to a prompt doesn’t have to feel formulaic, or like homework. Make every writing prompt personal! Learn to bend writing prompts to your will.

  • BlogHer has a wealth of post ideas — they’ll offer a set for November as NaBloPoMo begins, but also have a huge archive of prompts from past challenges.
  • We’ve got our own daily prompt here, and you can browse all our past prompts as well. And no one says a post needs to have words! Photo posts are totally fine — let our library of past Weekly Photo Challenges inspire you.
  • Our Community Event Listings collect blogger-run events on every subject imaginable. Even if you don’t join in the events themselves, you’ll find tons of post ideas.

When you think you can’t do this any more

  • Melisa from Suburban Scrawl, a NaBloPoMo regular, has a great list of tips for making it through 30 days of posting that will help any blogger post more consistently, challenge or not.
  • To get the most out of your month-long effort, go right to the source — BlogHer tells you how to have a NaBloPoMo that’s personally fulfilling and helps grow your blog.
  • Blogging is a marathon, not a sprint. Take a tip from marathon runners and use schedules, community support, and built-in breaks to keep you going.
  • Finding time to blog can be a huge part of the stress of NaBloPoMo — BlogHer has tips on how to keep writing when you think you don’t have time, and so do we.
  • Stop judging yourself! Often, writer’s block is our own overzealous internal editor — personally, I think you (almost) never have nothing to write about.

Do you have tips for getting through longer blogging challenges? Share ’em!

If you’re ready to commit to NaBloPoMo, you can add yourself to the official blogroll here.

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  1. As someone who is VERY new to the world of blogging, I’m looking forward to this challenge. I have several prompts lined up and I just hope that I have the mental stamina to keep it up. Cheers to NaBloPoMo!!!

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  4. Awesome! Not sure I will do the blogging, but I was going to try to write a whole book in a month so I might look into some of the others. I blog 5+ times a week so every day for a whole month wouldn’t be a big stretch.

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  9. I’m pretty new at blogging and haven’t heard of this at all! Is it one year considered new? I only have 35 posts of so… I had kept to myself pretty much but would love to start interacting with other bloggers. How does it work? I don’t want to do it by myself, the point of it for me would be to meet other bloggers, get opinions and advise and maybe get some followers. Could you please, any of you visit my blog and give me an idea if I’m doing things correctly? I’d love to take the challenge!

    Liked by 1 person

  14. Okay, maybe it’s because I am new to this but my first thought was: I don’t want to subject people to my mundane or mediocre writing for 30 days. I guess I’m the type who wants to edit and proof read many times because I publish a blog. Anyone have advice about this?

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    1. I’ve felt similarly about NaNoWriMo: how much does quality suffer when you’re striving for quantity (50,000 words in one month)? I’ve decided to try NaNoWriMo this year, and I’m approaching it in a more lax fashion – as someone with a full time job that isn’t blog/novel focused, I [usually] have just enough time to post on my blog 3X a week, so I am not expecting to reach 50,000 words. But I’m going to use this challenge as a way to brainstorm ideas, work on my prose, and develop characters to hopefully produce something that I’m proud of.

      I would suggest working along these lines for NaBloPoMo – maybe develop pages more thoroughly, really focus your blog if you haven’t already, take time to find blogs covering your interests, share with your followers those blogs that you find, post pictures, etc. If you can’t post everyday, at least work intensely on some aspect of your blog each day.

      Happy blogging!

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      1. Good advice! I think you are right. Just the exercise of it can be useful, especially as I am new to writing for a certain audience. Writing poetry as an angry teenager or essays for a personal journal or even analytic papers have such a different tone and feel. It’ll be good for me and my followers will understand or bare with me. 🙂 Thanks again

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  16. Does everyone spend time trying to find the perfect picture for their blog? Do you just Google it? But i’ts not like you have the authority to use any photo you come across there…so what’s the best and quickest way to find a pic for your blog?

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  18. This seems like a fun challenge, I don’t think my life as a Mummy will let me do a proper post everyday (taking and editing a set of photos a day every day AND writing something worth reading? No chance! :p) but it would be a good chance to learn how to do other, shorter types of posts 🙂

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  21. Great tips! We’re doing NanoPoblano again this year, and the blogroll is open till the 2nd, so if anyone wants to join up with us and focus on a smaller group of blogging-friends-going-through-the-same-chaos, they’re more than welcome. The blog roll as is: https://rarasaur.wordpress.com/nanopoblano-2015/ and my general pitch as to why it’s great to do this every November is here: https://rarasaur.wordpress.com/2015/10/18/waiter-there-is-too-much-pepper-in-my-coffeekash/

    And, to anyone doing any version of this insanity– good luck and congrats and yay and here’s-some-glitter-you-earned-it-already. ❤

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    2. Hey! I’ve already added my blog in the NaBloPoMo blogroll for November…can I also add it to NanoPoblano’s blogroll? Will I have to write separate blogs for each challenge?

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  26. I’ve done NaNoWriMo a few times and the good thing about it is that you don’t need to edit. You can edit in December. Nobody is going to read it unless you want them to. I would worry that with committing to posting a blog every day, my writing would be really rubbish unless I stayed up all night every night editing, and everybody would be able to read it!

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  28. I’m hoping to keep this up just for fun. But it is so different from my main subject/blog title. Does that matter? I’m heading the blogs NoBloPoMo, but even so they don’t have anything to do with Stan Watkins’ biography?

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      2. Michelle, I have posted NoBloPoMo posts – so enthusiastic I sent #1 on Oct 31! But they all come under my ‘stanwatkins’ blog, so I doubt anyone will read them. Your advice, please?

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