Thursday, November 15, 2007

Nablopomo Midpoint

Well, I've reached the midpoint of National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo), so here's a quick assessment of my thoughts thusfar:

  • I'm happy to have had something to help me refocus my efforts to do art on a daily basis. So far it has felt pretty natural and hasn't ever been odious or trying.

  • I had a whole series of wordy posts about art in mind for this month, but so far I haven't done any of them. I've spent some time thinking about the art blogs I visit regularly, and most of them have useful advice about the mechanics of doing and selling art, or have info about the art scene. I'm afraid my posts would have been more along the lines of "this is me, my background, and what I think". Yawn. We're all better off with me drawing pictures and giving them away.

  • The free postcard gig has been interesting from a sociological standpoint, and it has also taught me something about art marketing. Some of the postcards have been surprisingly difficult to give away given the volume of traffic passing through. Part of that is certainly the result of peoples' unwillingness to surrender the anonymity of surfing to comment and send a shipping address. Part of it is also past winners' concerns about being judged for being too greedy (believe me, it's okay with me if you win multiple cards). But I think a lot of it is that these ones are less exciting images and people are discriminating about what they like even when it's free. It's not like the feeding frenzy we get at work whenever there is free food; there's some sliding scale of perceived value that even applies to art items with no cost. Lesson-- it's hard to even give away mediocre work, so only put your best stuff forward. This is a surprisingly difficult lesson for artists, because, after putting time into a piece, you feel like it ought to have some value even if it doesn't work out.

  • I've been pretty disappointed in the ning.com platform used for organizing Nablopomo. Last year's Randomizer, a page for cycling through random participants' blogs, worked well to distribute traffic and allow one to explore the sites. The ning.com Randomizer is just broken, repeating the last few entrants' blogs. Not that increasing readership is my sole goal, but I want a little affirmation and engagement from this. Instead, I've gone ahead and drummed up some activity by myself through other means.

  • I also find that ning.com, which is more of a social networking site like Myspace or Facebook, sort of works at cross purposes with organizing an existing blogging community. A lot of participants are clearly confused whether to post in ning.com or their existing blog for Nablopomo. I've also found out that I am not really cut out for the social networking world-- being an INTJ, I need something more contained.

I don't mean to overemphasize that last whiny part, because I still feel very good about my commitment to post throughout the month. Plus I have been fortunate enough to discover some simultaneous blogger events better targeted to art blogs-- namely Drawmo, Art Every Day Month, and Pay It Forward. These events are of a much smaller scale, so it all feels a bit more immediate. Now if I can just figure out how to post while I am in the boonies over the Thanksgiving holiday, I should be golden.

3 comments:

Leah said...

i suppose i could have signed up for nablopomo since i am posting every day this month with art every day month, but since i'm posting more art than words, i decided not to, but it's nice to have so many people posting on a regular basis. any practice like this is good to do every so often.

i'm so glad you found aedm! it's wonderful to meet other artists and your work is fantastic!

p.s. i added your website to my links on my art weblog: http://bluetreeartgallery.com/blog AND i just realized that you weren't on the aedm list (i had put you on the list from last year by accident. sorry about that!), so you're up there now too.

Nat said...

Leah,
Thanks for stopping by, and thanks for the links. Blogging is enough a part of my routine (and I am a creature of routine) that daily posting doesn't give me an extraordinary sense of accomplishment by itself. The best part is certainly having some sense of community and joint effort, and making some discoveries of new blogs.

Dawn-Enigma Artist said...

Nat, I received the teapot. I love it! Thank you, Thank you!!!!

I linked to you on my Photo Thursday post and will through out the weekend.

I agree with you on Ning. I joined an Outsider Art group first, then THE Ning(I guess),and then NaBloPoMo... each one you have to set up a profile, pics, etc.. crazy to have to do that.

One profile, join groups... how hard is that??

I have not written a lot on my blog this month due to "writing" 50K for NaNoWriMo.