Last year one of my favorite bloggers, The Nester, announced that for the fourth year in a row she was going to write for 31 days straight about one specific topic in the month of October.  And for the fourth year in a row she invited others to join her and link up their posts on her site, every single day for the month of October.

I really wanted to join in, but alas at the time I had no blog.  I had nothing to link up with.  I had no place to post my thoughts.  So for thirty-one days I read her series.  And I read some of the others who linked up with her.  Twelve hundred folks linked up to her blog and participated in the 31 Days series.   I know this is a bit ridiculous and probably slightly dramatic, but I felt a little like Cinderella…I was invited to the party, but I had nothing to wear so I couldn’t go.

So when I started my blog in January this year, in the back of my mind was the spark of hope that this year, 2013, would be my opportunity to join in the fun.  I finally had a dress for the ball.  I realize writing for 31 days straight about the same thing might not be anyone else’s idea of fun, but it sounds very intriguing to me.

Honestly, I am not even sure I can do it, but I would like to try.

Now, I’ve had all year to think about what topic I would write about for 31 days, but last week when the proverbial rubber met the road, I drew a complete blank.  I almost started to panic because I have looked forward to this for a year and now that it’s here I was coming up empty…until the light bulb came on and inspiration rang through me like a bell.

Allow me to elaborate…a few weeks ago Ann Voskamp’s new book came out, The Greatest Gift:  Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas.  The book is laid out in 25 daily selections meant to be read in the Advent Season (the first 25 days of December).  When I ordered my copy of the book I intended to save it for the Christmas season, but how could I wait????  It’s Ann Voskamp for goodness sake.  So I started enjoying myself a little Christmas in September last week.

That’s when it hit me that I would love to read a selection of her book each day in October and then write a response to it.  Her book includes thought-provoking, reflection questions at the end of each reading selection so if I get stuck I could use the questions as a launching place.  The only obvious problem is that there are 25 reading selections and 31 actual days in October, so I think I will just choose six selections and write two responses to them.  Again, it’s Ann Voskamp, finding multiple themes and layers to write about from one selection should not be a problem.

I am posting this on Monday this week so that I can take the rest of the week to plan and start working on this little 31 Day writing project.  There are a couple of tech-y things I need to try to figure out and honestly the tech-y stuff is not my strength.  I am excited though to debut this neat little graphic that my 13-year old helped me design (maybe I should just hire her to figure out ALL of the tech-y stuff):

The other reason I am posting this on Monday is in case any of you would like to read the book along with me and then post your thoughts or responses to it in the comments each day.  If you are interested you have time to pick up a copy of the book before October 1^st.  If there are no takers, that’s fine, after waiting a year to do this there’s not a lot that will squash my excitement.