Read this. It’s great.

I was thinking about this topic a bit myself today. I previously wrote about NaNoWriMo and why I’m not participating. I think the concept is brilliant and wish all the participants the best, but because of the state of my own writing, I’m not in a position to participate.

My friend over at Untitled*United is not in NaNoWriMo this year, but is instead participating in NaWri15Mo. Won’t lie to you, I’d never even heard of it. I had to look it up. It’s on Tumblr, and it’s sole purpose is to help writers do fifteen minutes of focused writing per day in November.

Then, yesterday as I’m looking through tip posts on WordPress, I find a reference to NaBloPoMo.

NaBloPoMo? Sounds dirty.

Turns out this one is designed to get bloggers blogging more. Have to say, I’m all for it. There’s a reason I’ve kicked my own blogging in the ass recently to get it going. The result is that I’ve logged twenty plus posts in the last thirty days. And counting.

But do we need another bastardized form of NaNoWriMo to really get people writing? Are we just cheapening the concept by adding a fifteen minute focused version, and a version dedicated to blogging only, etc? Are we watering down the idea? There are probably more that I don’t even know about.

Or should we embrace all the opportunities to push us forward with our writing?

My answer (cause I know you’re just dying to know) is “Hell yeah, we should embrace it!”

These are contests in which the organizing body gives no prize. Hell, some don’t even have organizing bodies. You get little gifs or jpegs that you can post on your site or blog or whatever saying you participated or finished or done other damn reason.

Prizes aren’t the goal here, folks.

The goal is to get people, writers, writing. Shake off the cobwebs, brush off the rust, get your ass off the couch and away from the TV and in front of whatever your choice of media is (computer, typewriter, write longhand if it strikes you) and write. The goal is not publishing what you’ve got at the end, as some might think, though it’s certainly not outside the realm of possibility. The goal is to get writing.

I think you could argue that we don’t need less of these. We need more.

So go on! Get writing!