During the month of November many people around the world their minds turn to writing a 50,000 word novel. Now in its 15th year¹, NaNoWriMo has inspired thousands to 'get writing' with some of the novels being published by 'proper' publishing houses and many self-published.

Well, h2g2 didn't want to get left behind in all this and in 2010 we set up our very own writing challenge, NaJoPoMo - the h2g2 Nation’s Journal Posting Month. The rules are very simple, 30 days, 30 journal posts, one each day. It's quite a commitment and one I've not ventured into before but I've taken the plunge this year. I just hope I can last the month.

What do you write in a journal?

Anything you like really. What you had for your tea and what your dog had for his, is probably not very inspiring, but who cares? It's your journal, where you can write whatever you want, however you want. You might not be Samuel Pepys, but if you use your own voice you can make anything interesting. Heck, there doesn't even really need to be that much actual writing involved. If you're a photographer, show us a photo a day and tell us why you took it.

Over the last two years many researchers have taken part in NaJoPoMo and many topics have been covered. There's been fan fiction based on a video game, real life stories, comments on the news, poetry, all of human life was there in fact. The participants had fun and that's what writing should be all about, isn't it?. Yeah, there's the 'hard slog' afterwards if you want to actually publish your work, but what if you don't? What if, all you want to do is tell the world ² what you've done or accomplished in the last 24 hours? Valid reasons indeed for keeping a journal - even if you only do it in November.

Let's not forget the people we're trying to reach, the readers. And where would we be without the readers? Comments are good, but even if you have nothing to say, just leaving a smiley works as well, lets us know we're being read. One researcher, however, did think that the strawberry smiley was being used instead of a raspberry, so be careful what you use.

I'm looking forward to putting my fingers to keyboard this November. What will we learn? Will I learn to write? Will I learn something about myself? Or the others taking part? Only time will tell.

So good luck to all our NaJoPoMoers. And keep writing!