Sunday, September 26, 2010

Calling for submissions for the October Carnival of Natural Parenting!

We continue to be delighted with the advice and stories our Carnival of Natural Parenting participants share, and we hope you'll join us for the next carnival in October! (Check out January, February, March, April, May, June, July, and September if you missed them.) Your co-hosts are Dionna at Code Name: Mama and Lauren at Hobo Mama.

Please read to the end for an important announcement about November's Carnival.

woman dipping toes into waterHere are the submission details for October 2010:

Theme: Staying Centered, Finding Balance: For parents who practice attachment parenting, it can be tempting to center our lives around our children — but it's not healthy. This month we're going to talk about taking time for ourselves. Here are some possible topics for you to discuss: How do you take time for yourself? What passions do you pursue? How do you find the time and balance it with being a parent? And if you aren't taking time for yourself, what will you do to start? Think about how you feel when you do not get adequate time for yourself versus how you feel when you do.

Deadline: Tuesday, October 5. Fill out the webform (at the link or at the bottom) and email your submission to us by 11:59 p.m. Pacific time: CodeNameMama {at} gmail.com and mail {at} HoboMama.com

Carnival date: Tuesday, October 12. Before you post, we will send you an email with a little blurb in html to paste into your submission that will introduce the carnival. You will publish your post on October 12 and email us the link if you haven't done so already. Once everyone's posts are published on October 12 by noon Eastern time, we will send out a finalized list of all the participants' links, to generate lots of link love for your site! We'll include full instructions in the email we send before the posting date.

Please submit your details into our webform: This will help us as we compile the links list. Please enter your information on the form embedded at the end of this post, or click here to enter it on a separate page: October Carnival of Natural Parenting participant form

Please do: Write well. Write on topic. Write a brand new post for the carnival. As always, our carnival themes aren't meant to be exclusionary. If your experience doesn't perfectly mesh with the carnival theme, please lend your own perspective. Please also feel free to be creative within the gentle confines of the carnival structure. If you're feeling so inspired, you could write a poem, a photo essay, a scholarly article, or a book review instead of a regular blog post (though those are welcomed, too!), as long as what you write is respectful of the carnival's intent. If you want help determining that ahead of time, please talk with us.

Please don't: Please don't use profanity of the sort that might be offensive to more sensitive readers or their children. Please don't submit irrelevant or argumentative pieces contrary to the principles of natural parenting. You don't have to agree with all our ideals — and certainly you don't have to live up to them all perfectly! — but your submission does have to fit the theme and values of the carnival.

Editors' rights: We reserve the right to edit your piece or suggest edits to you. We reserve the right to courteously reject any submissions that are inappropriate for the carnival. Please also note that since there are two co-hosts on different schedules and conferring over email, our personal response to your submission might seem delayed. Don't be alarmed. We also reserve the right to impose consequences if the responsibilities of the carnival are not fulfilled by the participants.

If you don't have a blog: Contact us (CodeNameMama {at} gmail.com and mail {at} HoboMama.com) about potentially finding you a host blog to guest post. Please write your piece well in advance of the deadline in that case, so we can match you up with someone suitable. But if you really have something amazing to write — why not start your own blog? If you want advice, we find Scribbit's free Blogging in Pink ebook to be a very helpful and down-to-earth guide, for beginners on up.

If you have questions: Please leave a comment or contact us: CodeNameMama {at} gmail.com and mail {at} HoboMama.com

Links to tutorials: Dionna (and her hubby!) and Lauren have written several tutorials for our participants about how to schedule posts in advance, how to determine post URLs in advance, how to edit HTML — all for both Wordpress and Blogger users. For these tutorials and more, please see this handy summary post at LaurenWayne.com.

Stay in touch:
Carnival of Natural Parenting -- Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama

Show off: If you are a (former or current) participant or supporter and want our delightful button to put in your sidebar, grab this code and proclaim to the blogosphere that you are a natural parent!

Photo credit: trublueboy


Important Announcement About NEXT Month's Carnival:

Dionna and Lauren are excited to announce a new natural parenting project that will be coming soon. To celebrate our new project, we are going to do the November Carnival of Natural Parenting a little differently. Please watch for the official "call for submissions," which will come earlier than usual. In case you're feeling inspired already, our November topic will ask you to explore one concept from the natural parenting philosophy. (See a general description of what natural parenting is on our main carnival page.) Why is it important to you/your family? Or why does it resonate with you? Or what does it look like in your family?

Start writing and save your post for the November carnival!


3 comments:

Momma Jorje said...

Is there a difference between a Fan Page and a regular page on Facebook?

I'm considering participating in this Carnival (finally!)... and was just wondering.

Lauren Wayne said...

Oh, yea! We'd love to have you.

A fan page is the kind that a business or website starts and you can click the "like" button to become a fan. It's more of a public thing. You can start one for your blog, if you'd like. By a "regular page," do you mean like your personal profile? I don't mind if you want to give out your personal profile link to the other people, if you don't mind approving a bunch of new FB friends. It's really up to you.

Did that make any sense? :)

Momma Jorje said...

Yes it did, thank you! I don't think I'd mind the new friends, but for now I've already submitted the form! Go me!

In fact, I worry about submitting the form and then not following through, so I wrote my piece first and just emailed it. :-D

I'm so excited about participating!

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