Thirty

It’s the last day of this year’s blogging extravaganza known as Nano Poblano.

The perfectionist in me wants so much to go back and add two more posts so that I have a round 30, but alas, I’m all out of brain and wouldn’t want to write filler content just because.

28 is a good number – it can be divided a number of ways and it’s 28 more than nothing at all.

I know that tomorrow, I’ll probably decide to have a break from blogging for a few days, at least until I feel like I genuinely have something to share, or something that needs writing out. Or until my brain is somewhat less scrambled!

This month has taught me that I can still write.

It’s true, I genuinely feared that I wouldn’t be able to do this. My writing has been so sporadic and I’ve fallen out of the habit of even journaling. There have been moments this month where I tapped into a well that I thought I had utterly depleted.

Even with a few misses or repeats this month, it feels good to know that there is something still there.

I missed my blog anniversary this month too. It was on November 2nd 2007 that I wrote my first post here. I had just started my MA in Women’s Studies, and was considering shutting down my previous blog – devoted to feminism, for the most part – but also wanted a place where I could write about anything.

This blog has seen me through a lot. It has had a longevity that I never expected.

So many people move on from blogging, after a while. They outgrow it or it becomes too big for them and they might feel unable to be candid or share in the same way. I’ve experienced some of those feelings – at times thinking I should move on, that this blog somehow didn’t still feel like me – or that it has too many eyes on it, and I felt vulnerable.

I’ll admit that sometimes I read back what I’ve written and I cringe. Don’t all writers feel that way sometimes? I’ve put quite a few early posts back in the drafts for one reason or another. I’ve published posts and then re-read them and realised I made a few grammar or spelling mistakes.

I’ve noticed my run-on and unnecessarily complicated sentences and have gone back to chop them them down or re-word them. They do say that writing is mostly editing. I know the words I use over and over like well-worn slippers, and irritate myself by still using them in every paragraph.

In the end, though, this blog has moved with me. It has still been there, waiting, when I’ve needed it the most. It started as a blank page, a foundation, and it’s been built with time, and change, and the people who comment and interact.

It has shown me that there are genuinely lovely and thoughtful people in the world. I might not live on the same continent or in the same time-zone as many of them – you – but I’ve read so many incredible words over the years. And this month. All of us have something to say even if it’s just that we’re here, and we’re writing.

Tired, of course, but also – look at what community can do. Look at how creating brings people together. See how writing can become a conversation.

Happy Nano Poblano – this is never goodbye! I’ll see you in December, friends.

I’ll end with a powerful quote from a speech by Ursula Le Guin at the National Book Awards in 2014:

“I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries — the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art.”

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This post is part of NanoPoblano, a Cheer Peppers production! If you’d like to see what other people are writing and sharing, please click the image below.