Last Day to Donate!

This is it. The Write On, Mamas Indiegogo campaign ends tonight at midnight. Which means that this is the last day of the Blog-off. I’ve blogged for each of the 35 days of the campaign and reposted on five different sites: the family blog, A Band of Wives, SheWrites, Write On, Mamas, and my writing journal.

Here are a few of the things I’ve learned over the last 35 days:

It feels really good to write every day.

I had some fun fiction posts in this blog-a-thon. This one and this one were my favorites. And I got to thank some people in a way that felt both public and private. As in this post and this post.

It pays to go out of your comfort zone.

I felt so sheepish posting on sites that had were part of a larger community. (Such as SheWrites or ABOW.) I just kept picturing cynical folk glancing at their left sidebar and rolling their eyes at my self-promotional posts. For all I know, cynical folk did roll their eyes, but at least they didn’t email me to let me know about it. Instead I became better acquainted with those saints of the Internet, lovely people such as Leila Radan, ABOW's cheif communications officer, who writes a comment on every single blog post on ABOW.

It makes a difference what time of day your blog posts.

This post will publish to my Facebook timeline at the exact worst time: midnight on the west coast. The best time is mid-to-late afternoon or early evening. That seems to be the time when friends are online and perusing. They comment, they remember. Sometimes they even donate. (Hint, hint).

Blogging takes up a lot more time than I thought it would.

This was really this only negative. The writing doesn’t take up much time (and if you’ve been following along these last 34 days, this doesn’t surprise you). But the formatting for different blogs, creating hyperlinks, remembering to tag each post, pretending to know what “SEO” means. I can’t wait to go back to not writing my memoir.

You never know who is reading and nodding and will decide to donate.

Three years ago, I spent Christmas in the hospital. Two years ago, my niece and I put together a fundraiser to give cozy blankets and fuzzy socks to other patients facing a holiday hospital stay, specifically (Depresser Alert!) terminal cancer patients at the hospital where my father-in-law was treated. We raised $1500. There were many friends and family whom I knew would donate. But there were so many others—random friends to whom I just sent an email to on a whim—who had their own stories and their own reasons for wanting to contribute. I was floored at their generosity.

This is the last day I’ll bug you. Got an extra Andrew Jackson? Or a handful of AJs? Go here. I promise you warm fuzzy feelings if you do.