Woo-hoo! It’s the end of July, and observant readers will see that I have a post for every day in July. That means I have successfully completed my NaBloPoMo challenge to post each day for a month. Admittedly I didn’t always write each post on the day and a little bit of pre-posting and post-posting has smoothed out the daily blogging curve, but the point is, I wrote a lot more than normal.

I don’t plan to keep up daily blogging here – I think three or four posts per week are about what is important to me here, to keep me on track with my fiction writing – but I have enjoyed finding out that it’s possible. Of all the writing activities I do, writing for this blog is my favourite of all, usually even more than writing the actual fiction it refers to!

In other achievements this month, I see I’ve got my Google Page Rank (2) back which I lost when I transferred this blog to its own domain from Blogspot. That was a nice reassuring moment, and something I hope to build on as more of you lovely readers keep following the Becoming A Fiction Writer blog.

Did anybody notice that I’ve been posting awfully regularly here recently? I’ve certainly noticed and I’m more than a little proud of myself that we’re well past the halfway point of July, my personal NaBloPoMo month, and so far I have kept my goal of posting every day for a month.

The interesting thing is that posting more regularly at this blog has been an awful lot of fun. I love writing about fiction writing, and I love the fact that writing this blog makes sure I do it more often. I enjoy that keeping this blog going makes sure that I keep up-to-date with events in the books and publishing world, too, because it’s all too easy to slip back into my own little land but if I want to get published some day, I need to know more about what’s going on out there.

And the loveliest thing of all is that in the last few months I’ve been gathering a few more regular readers and even better, some of these lovely readers have been commenting. It’s great to get some feedback and to know that there are real people out there following my attempts to become a fiction writer.

On that note … are there any lurking readers out there who haven’t introduced themselves to me yet? I’d love to hear from readers in the comments here. Please?!

Sorry to all non-Commonwealth nations there for using a cricket metaphor … but I’m an Aussie and I grew up on cricket, so my blog can score a century if I want it to!

What I’m trying to say is that this is the 100th post on Becoming A Fiction Writer, which I started back in December 2006 when I boldly proclaimed “I’m gonna be a fiction writer!” Since then I’ve been rattling on about my procrastination and time management dilemmas and trying to learn some more about fiction writing in general. I had a big breakthrough when I decided, on the spur of the moment, to draft my novel in November 2007 as part of National Novel Writing Month, and since then, I’ve been able to get a bit of fiction writing done at fairly regular intervals.

But I definitely haven’t become a fiction writer yet, which is lucky, really, because otherwise I’d probably have to change the name of this blog. I’m not sure when the “becoming a fiction writer” goal is actually reached: is that when I have a novel published and on the shelves in shops near you? I guess that’s a good amount of the way there, although I have a feeling that becoming a writer is a lifelong process.

In any case, thanks for following through the century of posts. I adore getting comments from readers of this blog, especially utterings of sympathy, so keep them coming! It’s nice to know that there are other people out there going through similar fiction writing struggles as I am, or simply people who are interested in following what I’m up to. Thanks and keep reading and commenting!

I just stumbled across a nice blog called Project 183, written by a refreshingly normal-sounding guy from Melbourne who decided he would make a public list of 183 goals he wanted to achieve before he turned 30 (he’s 25 now). You know I love the idea of publicising my goals because that makes me more accountable, so this Project 183 site got me thinking about my writing goals again.

Since it’s over half-way through the year now, it’s time to take a look at my 2008 resolutions one by one (there are only five, not 183, so it won’t take too long). Strictly speaking, they’re not all fiction writing related, but it’s hard to separate all that writing sometimes, so here goes:

1. The good news is goal #1 (edit and submit my first novel) is complete – although as some wise man once said, art is never really complete, just abandoned. So I don’t rule out returning to edit it again, and perhaps in a couple of months I’ll dust it off properly and consider submitting it to agents, not just my favourite contests.
2. I’ve already got the first chapter of novel #2 done, a half-plan is in place, and I’m on track to write it during NaNoWriMo this November – although it might be with a late start as my sister-in-law and brother-in-law will be visiting during the first week.
3. Short story writing (my goal was to submit to 20 contests) has taken a back seat to novel writing and non-fiction blogging this year. I have submitted 3, which is obviously nowhere near half way. Will try to improve that.
4. My goal of increasing my travel writing income by 50% is probably well in progress, I think. Actually, I haven’t done quite enough bookwork there recently to really check the income, but with pay rises and a couple of extra jobs, it should be on target. We’ll see.
5. My original 5th goal was to monetise my Ballerina blog, but instead of that, I decided to start up the Same Sky Magazine instead as well as moving this Becoming A Fiction Writer blog to its own domain. Early days in both those processes yet, but at least the goal is partly achieved.

Mr Project 183 has inspired me to do more than just have my annual writing goals up online, so I’m going to start collating my lifetime fiction writing goals and post them soon. Hold me to that if you don’t see them appear in the next couple of weeks.

Remember how fantastic NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) was for ensuring that I actually got my fingers to the keyboard? A couple of weeks ago I found the blogging equivalent, NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) which not only has a weirdly cool name but also seemed like a great idea to get me focused on my own favourite personal blog (yep, this one!) rather than always being devoted to those other blogs that pay me a bit more consistently than your clicks on ads.

So, with no further ado … I hereby announce that during July, I’ll be doing my best to be a good NaBloPoMo participant, which means posting each and every day, including weekends. (Luckily, scheduled pre-posting is allowed too for busy days where I just can’t make it to a computer). My participant’s badge is here (above) and if I make it to the end of July I’ll get a pretty “I Did It!” kind of badge to add to my collection, a-la NaNoWriMo. NaBloPoMo (try saying that three times, fast!), here we come!

A couple of months ago, as loyal readers like my mother know, I swapped this blog over to its own domain. Not because I thought that would help me make my fortune with it, but because I have a few ideas for a blog that I would like to commercialise a little, and I thought that the process of setting up Becoming A Fiction Writer as a “real” blog would be great experience for the next ventures. At the same time, it’s really important to me to continue writing this blog to help motivate me to keep up with fiction writing and feel accountable, to myself at least.

In my ignorance, perhaps, I made the old Blogspot version of this blog private thinking that Google wouldn’t get confused by dual content and give me a terrible ranking. Never did it occur to me (because my page views had never suggested this) that I might have loyal readers who would now be lost, unable to find the new home of Becoming A Fiction Writer.

Until yesterday, when I received a lovely message from a reader in Ireland who’d followed my blog for long enough that they found themselves missing it when they couldn’t access it. I’ve now set that reader onto the new address (welcome!) and made the old blog public again to help people find me. Knowing that people are out there and following my progress makes a big difference to me – and reminds me that this weekend is for writing the outline of my second novel. There, I’ve said it, and somebody knows it (and not just my mother – although she’s a great motivator too!).