A few weeks ago, Laura of Geeky Mom announced that she was signing up for NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo is a month long on-line competition, where participants vow to write a certain number of words per day. At the end of the month, participants have the rough draft of a novel. Laura used the competition to get a rough draft a non-fiction book.
I liked Laura's plan and was thinking about copying her. I was having a tough time getting started on my own project this fall. But I ended up going in a different direction.
Hypothetically, if an individual blogs for many years, and while the blog attacks a number of topics, it comes back to certain topics again and again. Let's just say, that if one is fairly diligent about tagging the posts that writing a book becomes an entirely different process. One might cut and paste posts, arrange them in a coherent order, bridge topics, edit out the blogese, and find a simple, unifying message. One might have a book with very little new writing involved.
Just saying.
Apt. 11d 
I really am amazed at the number of bloggers that I’ve been reading for a long time who get deals. Comedy, fiction, cookbooks. I’d love to add you and non-fiction to that list. 🙂
Did you see that guy who twitters “Shit My Dad Says” got a tv deal with CBS?
I should’ve started “Shit My Kids Say” a long time ago.
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Laura, I actually have a project like the one you describe. It’s not the one I’m currently working on, but I did cut and paste a bunch of blog posts and organized them by theme. There’s something there, I think, but I don’t know what yet.
The current project is cruising along and I definitely think NaNoWriMo has helped. I am a little behind official word count, but not by much.
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I’ll buy it, so I hope you find it a good publishing home. 🙂
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John Scalzi.
Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded.
Hugo Award.
Just sayin.
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