So, anyone who spends much time on the internet, or else hangs out with liberal arts types, is probably aware of NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month in November. Now, if you’re a fifth year grad student or so, there’s NaDiWriMo, National Dissertation Writing Month, to try to motivate people to write their theses and get out of grad school. So I’m considering attempting to start (even if I’m the only participant) Math Blog Writing Month. Wherein I’ll post every day, with posts on the order of about a thousand words a day (a bit shorter than the 50k that NaNoWriMo shoots for over November, but still). I’m going to organize my project by picking a topic and blogging the hell out of it, and to make it focus me, I’m going to pick something that I either know nothing about, or else know only the basics of, and will start near the beginning and go as far as I can in a month, ideally completing a short book.
First off, any other math bloggers interested in doing something like this? If so, I’ll create a page and link to everyone’s series. If not, well, I’ll just be my usual crazy self and do it alone.
Second, I’ve got options on what I read, and want some input from what people would like to see. Though I won’t be sticking to any single text, I’m going to use some texts as examples of the material to be covered. Here are some of the options (and suggestions from the peanut gallery are welcome, as well as votes)
What should I write about in November?
(polls)
October 21, 2009 at 10:34 am
A thousand might be a bit much. There’s a certain threshold of comprehensibility unless most of the “words” WordPress counts are in
formulæ. I’ve got a bunch coming up around the 700-800 word line that would feel bloated if I pushed them any farther.
October 21, 2009 at 10:41 am
I’m interested. The main thing this would force me to do is write shorter posts about a single idea, whereas right now I usually try to do too much in one post.
October 21, 2009 at 11:14 am
I’d love to. I’m not convinced I’d actually be successful, though. I usually consider 1000 words to be pushing the long side.
October 21, 2009 at 11:32 am
Well, perhaps 1000 is a bit much. Maybe instead I’ll just do shorter, or, if I’m feeling ambitious, do two posts the same day.
October 21, 2009 at 12:29 pm
And though there were issues for a bit, the poll should be working again now, for anyone who wants to vote. I’m leaving it open until the 28th.
October 21, 2009 at 5:02 pm
in fact, there’s only so much blog that i can handle at a time … i recommend ensuring that different peoples math-blogging sprees are kept DISJOINT. then i can sing-along with the blog posts, actually learn stuff, and also make appropriate sensible comments (like this one :) ).
November 1, 2009 at 10:39 pm
[...] induced representation November 1, 2009 Charles Siegel over at Rigorous Trivialities suggested a NaNoWriMo for math bloggers: instead of writing a 50,000-word novel, just write a blog [...]
November 2, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Interesting idea, I’ll give this a try, and like Qiaochu, I’ll probably start posting shorter entries.
November 2, 2009 at 4:03 pm
[...] MaBloWriMo, parallelism trackback I’m going to try participating in Charles Siegel’s MaBloWriMo project of writing a short post a day for a month. In particular, I’m categorizing [...]
November 2, 2009 at 8:42 pm
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November 2, 2009 at 11:59 pm
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November 4, 2009 at 5:30 pm
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November 4, 2009 at 6:55 pm
I’ve created a MaBloWriMo page! I’ve got myself and four others who seem to be doing this, if you’re aware of anyone else (especially if you ARE that anyone) let me know either here or in a comment on the page and I’ll add you to the list.
November 12, 2009 at 4:25 pm
I’m pretty late, but I’ll do this. I have a few things to talk about.
http://somemathblog.wordpress.com/
October 28, 2010 at 9:55 pm
[...] year I participated in the MaBloWriMo project of blogging every day for a month about a topic. I think I learned a bit of differential [...]
October 31, 2010 at 11:45 pm
[...] at the definition of infinite sets, in the interest of keeping things short, and also possibly of MaBloWriMo. The next half will be up [...]
November 1, 2010 at 10:47 pm
[...] it appears there’s this thing. It’s inspired by this other thing. As a wannabe NaNoWriMoer (I will have the time someday!), [...]
December 3, 2011 at 5:05 pm
[...] mathematical terms without actually gaining understanding!) Ideally, I’m hoping to repeat a MaBloWriMo-type [...]
October 28, 2012 at 11:19 pm
[...] years ago I thought it would be fun to write a blog post every day of November. I’m not sure why I didn’t do this in November 2010 or 2011 because I’m pretty [...]