so you want to write 300 blog posts…

well, i made it!  i hit my goal of writing 300 blog posts before my birthday…and then i stopped posting.  not really, but almost!  it just happened to be a very busy week: VBS every afternoon and three (!) classes running concurrently for me.  add in summer temperatures that are getting warmer every day, and my mornings have been quite full.  but i wanted to write a bit about what i learned this year.

• give yourself margin.  my goal was to write 300 posts in a year, not to write every day.  i had a day off every week plus some sick days built in.  that made it feel a lot more spacious and a lot less like work.
• write a series.  i wrote two–one about keeping advent and one about celebrating the 50 days of Easter.  a series offers focus for the writing.  it also relieves the tedium of always reporting what’s happening in our days because there’s not all that much variation: we went to the library!  we took a walk!  read this neat article!  and when you’ve got the long year still in front of you, it feels so good to map out a few days or weeks of writing and maybe even write a few posts early and schedule them to appear on the appointed day.  there’s nothing like waking up and already having a post up!
• participate online.  of course there are the few sites you always visit, but what about throwing your net a little wider?  this year i joined twitter.  i know!  but it’s become a great way for me to find new people outside my normal homeschool mama blog universe.  i also went deeper.  also for the first time this year i participated in a MOOC.  again, it’s something good to write about, something a little outside my normal byways to think about.  i wasn’t taking the classes to improve my blogging, but all the writing and thinking spilled over and made this place richer.
• write for 31 days.   i also linked my Advent series with The Nester’s 31 Days series.  serious bump in traffic there!  i don’t know how many of you are still reading all these months later, but i’m happy to have you!  the series gives you a smaller canvas to work on and helps build momentum.  it’s really my #1 piece of advice.  the convergence of ModPo and 31 Days last October made it easy for me to write nearly every day.
• lower your standards.  William Stafford says that when you’re writing and you get stuck, you should lower your standards and keep going.  what passes as a blog post certainly got a bit looser this year!  i started posting more pictures, more quotes.  and every week i had two mini-series–one called Sabbath Rest, a simple image and quote from the lectionary for that day, and one featuring a quote from the archives of the homeschooling magazine called Growing Without Schooling.  these posts were restorative to me.  i got to spend time reading, pondering, looking.  i hope they were of use to you too!

so those are my five bullet points of advice.  go forth and write!  i can’t wait to see what *you* make!