On October 31, I mentioned to Micro.blog founder Manton Reece that I had seen references to a challenge called Blogvember. It sounded like a nice writing exercise for those who wanted to rededicate themselves to daily blogging, much like NaNoWriMo does for novel writers.
Micro All The Things!
Ever since I became the community manager of Micro.blog, I’ve developed an appreciation for the beauty of going “micro”: microposts, microcasts, micro meetups, microcosms of interesting humans interacting online on a human scale. I always think of prefixing things with “micro-” now, so I wondered if “Microblogvember” would have any appeal. I put the question to the community and got an enthusiastic response.
I came up with a simple way to generate daily random prompts (less work for me!) for people to incorporate into a short micropost (less work for everyone!). It was really fun and inspiring to see so many folks participate. Many commented that they were happy to have a nudge to get back into a daily writing habit.
This is what I like about a micro approach. Start with something small, and build on that. It also works with podcasting, for example. Micro.blog has spawned several microcasts (including our own Micro Monday) by making it easy to start small.
Starting small is great. And it’s also important to recognize the value of staying small, if that suits you or your project.
As I write this, there are fewer than 24 hours to go in the calendar day November 30, 2019. Today’s word is integrate. I look forward to seeing more posts from the community, as folks integrate blogging into their day.
A Few Lessons
1) Plan! Unfortunately, the idea didn’t hit me until October 31. It was already November 1 in some places, particularly New Zealand and Australia, where we have quite a few community members. Now that I know, I will be looking at my Focused 2020 Wall Calendar to schedule future challenges and get the word out in a timely manner. (We decided to extend the prompts into December, to give anyone who missed the beginning a chance to do 30 posts and earn the Microblogvember pin.)
2) Time zones make things a little awkward. For a calendar-based challenge like Microblogvember, I felt it was important to provide new prompts on the correct date in time for our friends on the other side of the International Date Line, a concept that gives me a headache! That might have been distracting for people who were still working a day behind. I have done challenges that just have numbered days, i.e. Day 1 is Day 1, regardless of the date, but then the Kiwis and others would be starting on November 2. I will be mulling this over, and would appreciate any feedback.
3) The random word generator was an excellent tool. It saved me from my natural inclination to curate a “perfect” list. Sometimes we got a word out of left field (woebegone?), but overall, the resulting list worked well. I plan to keep this tool handy, if only to give myself a random word when I need a theme or inspiration.
The 2019 Microblogvember Prompts
1: key
2: mark
3: fancy
4: mean
5: street
6: stick
7: frightening
8: star
9: cold
10: space
11: touch
12: stay
13: able
14: neck
15: murky
16: selective
17: superb
18: build
19: abate
20: second
21: hollow
22: hum
23: woebegone
24: company
25: secure
26: mix
27: rich
28: property
29: fantastic
30: integrate
