Did you NaJoPoMo? Did you read NaJoPoMo? We're sure you enjoyed it – we did.

Every year, it seems, people all over the internet world get the urge to blog. We are not immune, and thus, Create's NaJoPoMo challenge was born. Write a journal entry for every day of November: simple? Bah! What do you write about?

Well, now, if you're Galaxy Babe, and scheduled for fancy surgery, you have your subject all ready-made with thrills and excitement. (We're so pleased it went well.) But what about the rest of us boring people?

Amy Pawloski has been faithful and true. Not only did she add to her journal every day, but she made sure that everybody else knew they were being read. Thanks, Amy – the encouragement was appreciated. Amy illustrates the brain-strain undergone by so many dogged NaJoPoMo'ers in her entry for 26 November:

Not much happening here (what else is new?), except I'm tired and can't go to bed until I get the girls into theirs.

Well, it was a journal entry. So was this one, by Solnushka:

This was supposed to be a post about borscht, but the computer ate it.

We've been there. Of such flashes of insight is NaJoPoMo made.

There have been howling NaJoPoMo successes, of course – and not all the howling was from Beatrice's dogs. Bea delighted us all month with verse. The subject? A month of abstinence from alcohol, combined with a programme of diet and exercise. The result? Literary joy.

30 days hath November –

I shall count them all

As I try to make it through

With no alcohol

And to max the benefit

I shall exercise

Jillian Michaels Ripped in 30

To tone my arms and thighs

And to keep my brain in fettle

I shall write in verse

Will I reach December feeling

Better or much worse?

We think Bea's feeling better – she's on a cruise, after all – but if you want to explore the ups and downs of how she got there, you could do worse than read the thread.

Bea wasn't the only NaJoPoMo'er who chose poetry as a medium. Minorvogonpoet, true to her username, also gave us verse –   a haiku (or two) a day. This 'haikuathon' provided literary entertainment and food for thought.

Dwarves in the garden

digging channel. They explain

its flood defences.

I happen to like that one, but I'll bet each reader has a favourite.

A prose motif was chosen by Paulh, who told us a story each day, complete with massive literary references, lots of jokes, and a cliffhanger ending. We kibitzed by making snarky remarks writing encouraging comments.

"How will I ever get out of this?" Paulh moaned as he struggled against the handcuffs that were trapping him in a dungeon in his cellar.

To find out how he got out of this, read the story.

Icy North kept everybody entertained with an eclectic mix of news, personal observations, and diabolically difficult quizzes. People of a certain generation found rich food for thought in observations like this:

No time for a long journal today, sorry. Just a thought:

If you were born on the day that Freddie Mercury died, then today you'd be holding your 21st birthday party.

Well, it's a theme...

It's a theme, indeed.

AE Hill kept everyone on the edge of their computer chairs: how would he finish his magnum opus of a Guide Entry? And, in the end, how many Guide Entries would he have generated? We call this killing two birds with one stone. We approve.

Your Editor's effort fell into the odd-ball category. (Quiet in the back.) Anytime you feel like watching a weird film you don't have to pay for, you can go to the archive and browse Freebie Film Tips. Like many of my gifts to h2g2, this one is of dubious merit, but possibly contains value as a conversation piece. It starts with Punk Bouzouki music and goes downhill from there.

A number of our participants fell by the wayside for one reason or other. We love them, anyway, and the occasional post from those who didn't complete the run was always welcome. We'll excuse Malabarista on the grounds that her fall from the project was literal: nobody should have to NaJoPoMo with a concussion from a horse-riding accident. Shame on that equine, anyway. We'll let minichessemouse's post speak for all the partial posters:

Well well well I *am* a naughty mouse. I had good intentions of partaking in and completing NaJoPoMo again this year, but erm, forgot on the second and couldn't really be bothered making up for it after that.

Couldn't have said it better, Mini.

Reading the sane NaJoPoMo threads, like Vip's, will give you an idea of what's going on in the world away from your computer.

Unpleasant weather out there. Yuk.

Pithy. True. Try to resist Recumbentman, I dare you, when he begins. . .

Every day, more or less, my wife and I play Scrabble after lunch, with our cup of coffee.

You want to know more? Take and read, to quote St Augustine.

Hellboundforjoy's journal is full of adventure, like this post:

I have about 7 minutes to finish this entry and I don't much feel like it. Finishing the entry, that is. So I'm going to practice some little used smileys.

That deadline bothered people. Rosie expressed the feeling of the home stretch:

Monday. . .4 more days to go ....

On the other hand, benjaminpmoore found the deadline inspirational:

So why I am doing this if I don't want to? Well I do, I love this, I love writing, and if I'm honest I quite like this ridiculous business of writing against the clock. That's why I'm still writing now, rather than having given up two paragraphs ago and called it a day.

Or, as Trillian's Child put it:

Instead of doing some very urgent tidying up, I decided to write down all these thoughts that were rattling around in my head.

We're glad they took the time, aren't you? We'll let Icy North have the last word, since he claimed he actually learned something from all this:

Ten things I learned in the responses to my November journals:

• You can tell by sight whether a geek works in San Francisco or Mountain View, Silicon Valley.
• A NASA photography expert agrees that a photograph of a pub ghost is genuine.
• Dmitri's blackberries ripen in June.
• I attended the same university as Z, Pirate Alexander Legray and Vip.
• Mortality rates for breach pregnancies are shockingly high (but less so if you have a Caesarian section).
• Gnomon has a 'Badger' h2g2 skin.
• Deb is keeping a dead burglar's hand until she finds a use for it.
• Mala has whole, fried mice on toast, as a cure for nosebleeds.
• Chestnut soup is a speciality of the Cevennes region of France.
• If you construct a pentagon with ruler and compass, the resulting drawing resembles a one-eyed penguin.

Not bad. Not bad, at all...

Dmitri Gheorgheni

03.12.12 Front Page

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