Image via WikipediaAre you having as much fun with the alphabet as I am?
I've been preparing my A to Z posts and having a great time with it. I think I've come up with some fun A to Z posts for April and maybe some surprises. Since last year I'm sold on the idea of preparing posts ahead of time so I can do more visiting come April.
Alana Garrigues talked about the idea of preplanning in her A to Z guest post this past Monday. If you missed Alana's post, it's well worth your time to go back to visit it. She provides some excellent tips on how to tackle the Challenge and breaks things down into some easily digestible bits.
That's the way Alana operates. Visit her blog Writercize and you'll see what I mean. I had some fun with one her writing exercises the other day when with a tip of her hat to the A to Z Challenge she posed the following:
Write a 26 word glimpse of a story or poem in which each word begins with a different letter of the alphabet, in alphabetical order, from A through Z.
With my mind filled with thoughts about the A to Z Challenge, I offered this:
"A big challenge daunts everyone. Forget gentility. Have
intrepidation! Just keep laconic. Make notes or prepare quite
rigorously. Such tactics unleash victory. Winners--Xerox your
zeal!"
Alana suggested I put my attempt here which was exactly my idea as soon as I had finished writing it. See how much inspiration the alphabet can offer.
The biggest A to Z news this week was the announcement of the A to Z Video Challenge. If you like to make videos I encourage you to try this.
Contrary to some of the comments we received, making a video such as this doesn't have to require immense video making skill or many hours in creating a video. You can make a pretty decent video entry in an hour or even less. Try it--you might like it! And the more entries we get, the more fun prizes we'll come up with.
So there you go. Lot's happening in Alphabetland. The April Challenge sign-ups are now only a week away. Are you ready for the fun?
20 comments:
All ready Lee.
Yvonne.
Yes, ready. Video almost ready as well. Just have to find a good soundtrack and done :)
Ready for the fun!
Nearly ready to go in April.
Teresa
getting dizzy thinking about april... it's going to be killer.
Jeremy [Retro-Zombie]
Visit The Madness:
IZOMBIE
Come February 1 and I'll be alphabet crazy too! I like the idea of writing and scheduling in advance. It takes the pressure off and makes it more fun.
I was thinking of getting my A-Z posts ready ahead of time too...trouble is, I'm not sure yet what to write about...I mean, should I go with one topic..or should I have 26 different topics? I'm just not sure yet..
Hi Lee .. great thoughts and I love Alana's 26 word challenge - fun and excellently executed!
Cheers Hilary
I agree that one video a day for 26 days is a big time commitment. But I don't see why they couldn't be peppered about the blogs on occasion.
I'm ready.
VERY creative A to Z poem. Don't think I could have done that!
Love your response to Alana's challenge, Lee. Very creative! I'm excited & looking forward to the April challenge.
Lee,
I like what you did with Alana's alphabet themed Writercize. The thing that I've also noticed with a lot of your work is that it introduces me to words that I'm unfamiliar with and so I set out to try to remember to find the definition and meaning of them.
So it looks like reading blogs also helps to build one's vocabulary or at the very least, an extended understanding of more terms....which is always helpful in all forms of communication.
Yes, I'm ready for the A to Z fun. Ready in spirit, that is. I'm still in the planning stages for my posts. I plan to come up with some ideas ahead of time but probably won't write any of them until April. Still, the inspiration is half the battle...or maybe one-quarter of the battle: inspiration, writing, reading other blogs and commenting...yeah, I think that pretty much sums up the challenge!
The video challenge is a whole other ball game. I have some pretty lofty ideas for videos that I would like to be able to submit and now I have to adjust them and change some altogether so as to simplify the process because at the rate I was going when you first made the announcement...I would need weeks of shooting and another few weeks of editing, along with some additional production help...all which I KNOW I wouldn't be able to assemble by March.
So I'm scratching that and moving on to some less complicated ideas. Hopefully they'll make people laugh, smile or wonder if I'm crazy ;) hehe
The Madlab Post
Such a talented A to Z Challenge leader you are Lee! I agree with all the comments above about how impressively you handled 26 measly words. Thanks for posting this! :)
Gosh, I'm just not the planning type. Haven't even THOUGHT about what I'll do for the A-Z. ;)
Impressive, Lee! I'll probably at least try and prep the tougher letters ahead of time.
Great writing exercise, and you nailed it Lee! Way to go. I'm a bit confused from some of the comments, though. It seems that maybe some people interpreted the video challenge to be: make a video for each letter of the alphabet. That was not the intent of the video challenge, though if that's something you want to tackle, by all means do so! Just to clarify, the video challenge is to make something creative that advertises what we'll be doing in April. Of course as far as I interpret the guidelines, you may enter more than one video. Other hosts, correct me here if I'm wrong...I have been buried in google calendar for a while and am coming up for air.
Tina @ Life is Good
Co-Host of the April 2012 Blogging from A to Z Challenge
Twitter: #atozchallenge
Marta -- Looking forward to seeing your video and including it on the A to Z Blog.
Eve -- I've always leaned toward 26 topics, but either way can work just fine.
Kelly -- The A to Z Video Challenge is not to be confused with the April Challenge. The Video Challenge is 1 video now that is about the April Challenge. We are merely promoing the upcoming month long Challenge with video.
Nicole -- Don't worry about producing any magnificently complex video Just have fun with it. Creativity will count more than professional appearance. Thanks for the kind words.
Alana -- Thank you for saying so and for inspiring me. You wrote an excellent piece for A to Z and accompanied it with a highly appropriate exercise.
Tina -- I was taking the comments one at a time so, yeah, what Tina said about the Video Challenge. You said it well Tina. Maybe I'll have to put together a VIDEO CHALLENGE STARTS NOW WITH JUST ONE VIDEO NEEDED!!!! post to clarify any confusion.
Thanks to all the rest for their kind words and updates on their A to Z thoughts.
Lee
Tina -- Oh yes, and more than one video is fine. We want to see lots of videos.
Lee
I am going through a dry season :) Hopefully wet season will return soon :)
I'm definitely going to need to do more preparation this year - finding time to do anything is a task nowadays.
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