A Nationally Declared Month

This month has been declared "National Blog Post Month," or "NaBloPoMo." The idea is that people are supposed to post on their blogs every day of the month. Why? I have no idea. I'm not sure that all two of my readers would want to hear from me every day, although this particular month does seem a likely candidate to present enough blog-worthy moments.

It is also "National Mustache Month," or "NaMuMo," I guess. Following on the heels of October's big push for breast cancer awareness, someone declared this as a real thing to raise awareness about men's health issues. Apparently people sponsor this. We have a good friend who has the tradition with his brothers of always growing mustaches for Thanksgiving. Apparently they were ahead of the trend. As for Brady's participation in this nationally declared event, well, I told him no one is paying him to grow a mustache, so maybe not this year.

It is also "National Novel Writing Month," or "NaNoWriMo." I'm not making these abbreviations up. People really use them. Apparently everyone is supposed to try to write a novel this month. The challenge is to write a little over 1500 words a day to get a roughly 50,000-word novel complete by the end of the month (which is actually a pretty short novel). Brady told me about this last year and my first response was, "That's the worst idea ever."

You'd think, given my background as a writing instructor, that I'd be all for this. You'd think wrong. Yes, I think people should write, and should hone the skill. Everyone would benefit from doing more of it. It's a great form of communication, learning, expression, exploration, and so much more. But not everyone should write novels.

For me, the thought of so many novels being written in November conjures the image of an overflowing submissions pile on some poor editor's or intern's desk in December. My inner-editor cringes at the thought. I used to be that person, the one who had to wade through the "slush pile" looking for potential acquisitions. Sometimes it was an entertaining part of my job as an editor to take a break from the computer screen and red pens, kick my feet up on the desk, and read submissions for a while. But sometimes reading manuscripts that ranged from the preposterous to the infuriating to sometimes the just plain boring was less than enticing, and often low enough on the priority list that the pile of submissions just grew and grew faster than I could keep up with. The thought of so many more people getting it into their heads that they should be novelists doesn't sound so great to me. I mean, I guess it's okay if everyone writes a novel, but in my experience, not everyone should presume to be a novelist.

All these national month assignments made me wonder just how one gets a month declared something, and on a national level too. I suppose their ambition is laudable at some level, but who decides these things? Who makes it official? Today I was amusing myself with some abbreviations of activities that should be declared and nationalized into their own months. Then I thought, who am I kidding? Between the discomfort and nausea while I wait for this baby to come, I'm not doing much of anything. Once the baby comes, I'm probably going to be recovering and adapting to a growing family, I probably won't be getting out and doing much either.

So, I finally arrived at declaring it "National do Nuthin' and Nap til Noon Month," or as I like to call it, "NaNuNaNoo(Mo)." (Yeah, it was a stretch to get to that one. Thanks for hanging in there on this one.)