As many of you will know, November is National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo for short, during which participants each attempt to write 50,000 words of a novel. Mr Snail of Happiness has participated in this event in the past – resulting in the first half of his novel BATDIG in November 2011 (the second half was completed a bit later). Last year he was less successful, as he suddenly got swamped with work and did not have time to write the target of more than 1600 words each day.

Anyway, here we are again. Mr S-o-h has decided to accept no external work this month and is focusing on a whole new novel, which means that I will have plenty time to myself whilst he is busy writing. I certainly don’t have a novel in me. I love writing, but have no ideas for stories and no desire to be a novelist. Over the years I have had various pieces of work published (including a chapter in a book about restoring land after opencast mining, various articles in the local newspaper, a piece in Natur Cymru about teaching natural history, and a book on scientific writing) but it is blogging that I have found most inspiring. I think that this is because of the opportunity for direct feedback and seeing that people are really engaging with what I write.

So, I have decided to show my support for Mr S-o-h and write something here on my blog every day this month. My posts probably average four or five hundred words, so I’m not going to get anywhere near the NaNoWriMo-ers, but it will still be quite an endeavour. It turns out that I am not alone in wanting to do this, so I have joined NaBloPoMo – National Blog Posting Month. Hopefully, over the next four weeks, I’ll entertain you and give you some things to think about in relation to living more sustainably… so please try to visit regularly and see what I’ve been up to… and read yesterday’s poem if you missed it (it was NaBloPoMo post #1).