Blogging a Book

A few weeks ago, Laura of Geeky Mom announced that she was signing up for NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo is a month long on-line competition, where participants vow to write a certain number of words per day. At the end of the month, participants have the rough draft of a novel. Laura used the competition to get a rough draft a non-fiction book.

I liked Laura's plan and was thinking about copying her. I was having a tough time getting started on my own project this fall. But I ended up going in a different direction.

Hypothetically, if an individual blogs for many years, and while the blog attacks a number of topics, it comes back to certain topics again and again. Let's just say, that if one is fairly diligent about tagging the posts that writing a book becomes an entirely different process. One might cut and paste posts, arrange them in a coherent order, bridge topics, edit out the blogese, and find a simple, unifying message. One might have a book with very little new writing involved.

Just saying.

Comments

[Lisa V]

I really am amazed at the number of bloggers that I've been reading for a long time who get deals. Comedy, fiction, cookbooks. I'd love to add you and non-fiction to that list. :)

Did you see that guy who twitters "Shit My Dad Says" got a tv deal with CBS?

I should've started "Shit My Kids Say" a long time ago.

[Laura/Geekymom]

Laura, I actually have a project like the one you describe. It's not the one I'm currently working on, but I did cut and paste a bunch of blog posts and organized them by theme. There's something there, I think, but I don't know what yet.

The current project is cruising along and I definitely think NaNoWriMo has helped. I am a little behind official word count, but not by much.

[JennG]

I'll buy it, so I hope you find it a good publishing home. :)

[Doug]

John Scalzi.

Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded.

Hugo Award.

Just sayin.