Image by J. Money via Flickr/Creative Commons

Since I'm a writer, blogger and feminist it should come as no surprise that Julie & Julia is one of my favorite films. I watched this great Nora Ephron movie Friday night and by the end my enthusiasm for blogging was renewed. 

I started thinking about Julie Powell and other bloggers who have been wildly popular and landed book deals because of their websites. The one thing these writers seem to have in common is that they were willing to do something crazy. Naysayers may call it a gimmick, and perhaps for some it is just that. But when I think about Julie Powell and women like Rachel Bertsche, author of the blog and book MWF Seeking BFF, they were all willing to do something that took courage and discipline, whether that was cooking 524 Julia Child recipes in 365 days or going on fifty-two friend-dates, one per week for a year, in hopes of meeting a new Best Friend Forever.

And so I present a challenge. 

November can be a lonely month for us creative non-fiction writers because in November many of our ambitious fiction writer pals are busy with National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo.

So I thought, what if we bloggers had a project of our own for the month of November.

Inspired by Tarayi Jones' #writelikecrazy, in which she encouraged writers to write every day for a month, I've decided to launch #bloglikecrazy for the month of November.

Here's the #bloglikecrazy challenge: publish a meaningful blog post every single day in November. That's 30 posts in 30 days. 

I've tried to do this several times before and failed miserably. But I figure I'd be a bit more motivated if I'm actually leading this endeavor.

So are you with me?

Project #bloglikecrazy will begin Nov. 1. 

Also, if you'd like you can sign up for me to send you writing prompts throughout November to help get those creative juices flowing. Just email me at javacia@gmail.com with #bloglikecrazy in the subject line and in the body of the email simply say "I want prompts so I can #bloglikecrazy!"

So does this mean that after blogging for 30 days you'll get a book deal? Probably not. But at the end of November you will be more dedicated to your blog and it's dedication that will help you make your writing dreams come true. 

So let's blog like crazy!

Image via Flickr/Creative Commons

Last night at about 7 p.m. I decided to join writer Tayari Jones in her plan to #WRITELIKECRAZY for the month of August. (Thanks to Tatiana of Tatiana In Flux for telling me about this.)

#WRITELIKECRAZY is nothing like NaNoWriMo. In fact, Jones hates National Novel Writing Month, which is when writers attempt to write a 10,000 word novel in the month of November.  For #WRITELIKECRAZY you simply set your own goal for the month. Decide what you want to accomplish and just go for it.

My goal is to publish a blog post here at WriteousBabe.com every day in August. In September I plan to guest blog like crazy in an effort to get new readers. So I need to make sure I have plenty of good content for these new folks to check out. Also, I'll be returning back to work soon and will, therefore, be tempted to write less and less. I hope this challenge will keep me on track.

So, who wants to #WRITELIKECRAZY with me this month? Jones would like those participating to like her Facebook page and share their progress there. I'd love for you to keep me posted on your progress at my Facebook page as well.

Let's do this!

Each month here at The Writeous Babe Project, I am going to give myself some sort of writing or blogging challenge and my hope is that you will join me in a few of them. 


This month is the comment challenge. I got this idea from one of my favorite websites Independent Fashion Bloggers. Their comment challenge was inspired by Amy at Wolf Whistle  who last October set a goal of leaving 500 blog comments during the month. 


Uh, I'm not doing that. 


But I figured that committing to leaving 60 comments this month (that's just two comments a day) would be a manageable goal but still a meaningful one. 


One rule I'm setting for this is the comments must be thoughtful. So saying "Nice post" (which you blogger know you all hate) will not cut it. 


Commenting on posts is a great way to support and encourage your follow bloggers and believe or not you get something out of it too. Commenting can help get your name out there and if nothing else committing to leaving more comments will force you to read more blogs, something every good blogger should do.


So I hope you will join me. Once a week I'll update you on my progress and even share links to some of the great posts I've discovered along the way.