Blogathon Begins! Goals and Offers

You are all very lucky that I exercised self-restraint with the title. I wanted to write, “Blogathon begins with a ballet of bullet points” but that’s as sickening to read as it is to say out loud.

Regardless of the alliterative indulgences of your blogger, today’s Blogathon, featuring The Merely Real and Considered Exclamations (Andrew Tripp) (who will soon be sitting across the table from me) and also Greta Christina (who sadly is not sitting across the table from me), has begun!

I was going to skip the obligatory intro post, but then I realized it’s a good place to make lists.

List 1: My goals. It’s pretty silly to do a big thing like this and not keep a focus on what you’re aiming for.

• Raise money for the Secular Student Alliance. This is obviously the main point; this crazy endeavor is an exercise in getting people to give an organization I love money for writing words (and other things, see below). Why should you? My reasons are here and many others can be found here.
• Work on my blogging. I’m going to write 25 posts over the course of this day, which is a full half of what I have on this blog already. I might as well try to improve. This entails:
  • Learning how to write short pieces. For those of you who are new, I am very bad at this. I like to talk and write, and when I pick a topic, I like to hit all possible sides of it. But if I’m to become a better writer and blogger, I need to learn how to write short, interesting pieces that feel complete. To that end, I am going to have a loose goal of 500 words per post. At which I’ve already failed. Awesome.
  • Trying to be quotable. If the pieces are short, then they need to be jam packed with interesting and easily shareable takeaways.
  • Making every piece have a point. I know that I’ll be just shoving out posts as fast as I can at some posts because I’ve fallen woefully behind, but in theory, each post should serve a distinct purpose of transmitting information, arguing for a point of view or explaining an issue.
  • Follow good writing tips as laid out by Jesse Galef and Luke Muelhauser.
• Drink a lot of coffee. I’m at a coffee shop. This shouldn’t be too hard.
• Have fun! I’ve been ravenously excited for this for about a week now. I love challenges, I love writing, I love expressing opinions and I love the SSA. Blogathon is an excellent combination.

List 2: What do I want from you?

• Money: Donations to the SSA are very welcome. In the My Goals section above you’ll find links to all the reasons I think you should donate using the donate button below. But I’m also willing to give you interesting things for your money, if you’re looking for a trade (for that you’ll need to screenshot your donation and email it to me at cmessinger AT uchicago DOT edu). For example:
  • You can pledge a fixed amount per post or per word. (Be careful about pledging per word J)
  • You can pick a topic for me to write about. This can be pretty much anything, but I’m trying to stick to secular/atheistic/humanistic type topics for the day.
  • You can pick a position for me to take. If I don’t agree with it, I will make it clear that it is not mine, but I am happy to try to argue for positions that are not my own.
  • You can ask me to video blog a post instead of writing it.
  • You can ask me to do something silly and photograph/video myself doing it (within reason)
  • You can ask me to write a limerick about you (if I know you)
  • You can ask me questions (well within reason)
  • ????
• Ideas for what to give people in exchange for their money. See: above.
• Ideas for what to write about in case I run out (this is unlikely)
• Follow me on twitter, where I will be updating throughout the day.
• Company! Comment on the posts, with opinions, suggestions, criticisms, questions, declarations of love, fun facts about walruses and general support! Also keep me company on twitter.

This has been Post the First for Blogathon