And now for some Christmas cheer:
Some great A to Z reminder posts have been appearing on your sites.
Dave from Dave Wrote This made an early announcement in December and said that he was getting ready.
The ever-endearing Yvonne Lewis of Welcome to My World of Poetry created another poetic A to Z announcement on December 2, 2011. Be sure to visit her site and find out the latest about her new book of poetry. Yvonne has also informed me that she's got her April posts ready to go--now that's what I call being prepared.
A to Z aficionado Shannon Lawrence gave the Challenge a nice mention on The Warrior Muse and displays the badge on her sidebar. Shannon has a Reflections post coming up on Thursday 12/29 and will undoubtedly have more surprises in the months to come.
On December 12th the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge Blog made it as a Blogger Blog of Note. Jenny Pearson at Pearson Report was on the spot with an Extra breaking news report.
HAVE A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!
April Blogging from A to Z Challenge #AtoZChallenge
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Twas The Night Before Christmas When Nicole Dropped In
Image by cassie_bedfordgolf via FlickrIt's Christmas Eve and we have a last minute guest. Nicole from Madlab Entertainment has offered her A to Z Reflections for this day. You might remember Nicole from her past visits to Tossing It Out or maybe from her wonderful comments you might have seen on your blog or elsewhere. So grab a cup of hot chocolate or whatever you feel like having and relax a spell with Nicole.
My Blogging from A to Z Reflections Post
My experiences with the Blogging from A to Z Challenge was exciting, inspiring and exhausting but it was all for a good purpose. The only frustrating aspect of the challenge that I experienced were the captcha features that many bloggers had on their blogs. This made it difficult to visit and comment on as many blogs as I hoped, especially because I am having problems with my computer.
Still, it was only a minor stumbling block compared to the wonderful experiences that I had while participating in the blogging from A to Z Challenge. One of those experiences included winning my first ever blog award, the Creative Blogger Award from Deirdra who operates A Storybook World and I want to take this time to thank her again for such a thoughtful award.
The A to Z Challenge helped me become more productive as a writer and blogger by posting more on this blog of mine, The Madlab Post. The challenge also helped me to take a more active approach in promoting my blog and making it known to new readers while also meeting new bloggers that share similar interests. I gained an estimated 30 or so followers from my participation in the A to Z Challenge. This total is significantly less than what I desired but it’s also a lot more than what I had before I started the challenge, so the results are greater than I could have expected.
Reading dozens of blog posts was the most challenging aspect of this event for me due to a combination of factors including my work responsibilities, a slow computer and the captcha issue. The amount of published authors and writers participating in the challenge surprised me the most because I thought that the participating blogs would be a balanced mixture of subjects or niches but noticed that the majority seems to include writers with published novels or soon to be published novels. I would participate in the A to Z Challenge again because it gave me the opportunity to increase readership for my blog and also because it caused me to be accountable to a blogging schedule.
The A to Z Challenge also introduced me to some inspiring men and women from around the world who appear to be very successful and happy and able to do what they love, which are all things that I strive for but feel like I fail, so it’s nice to be in the company of people who will bring out the best in what I have to offer. It makes me want to do better and move more swiftly and diligently toward reaching certain goals.
I would recommend the A to Z Challenge to others who need a fresh start with a new blog or who want to turbo-charge the blog that they already have. I would also recommend the challenge to poets and lovers of literature even those who do not blog because, if for nothing else, it provides great writing exercises and entertaining reading activities.
I would not know whether the A to Z team of event hosts did an adequate job of helping to answer questions or solving problems because after a few days, I just stuck with Arlee at Tossing It Outbecause it was a challenge keeping up with all of the hosts PLUS other bloggers participating on top of that....I would never get anything else done that way, so I had to just stick with one host only.
I also do not have an opinion on the preparation leading up to the challenge because I joined at the last minute, like the last day or two of March. I don’t really see anything wrong with the challenge and think that it is a very useful event. The only suggestions that I would offer to improve it would be to remove bloggers from the Linky list who have not kept up on their blogging through the challenge. I’ve come across a few who either did not start the challenge at all and their last post was in like February or March or others who started the challenge but their last post is for letter “D” or something like that.
I know that it’s easy to get behind if something happens but there is clearly a different between a blog that is like 2 or 3 letters behind and a blog that hasn’t written anything in like 2 weeks. An ideal setup would be for one of the organizers to check blogs, or create some kind of check-in system where participating bloggers must sign-in for the day or something. It could be as simple as requiring bloggers to leave a comment on a specific blog or something....and then participating bloggers could go by the current comment section when trying to visit blogs, instead of using the Linky List to visit blogs.
I am glad to have come across some very special bloggers with entertaining, creative, educational or just plain ol’ inspiring blogs. Having already recognized many these bloggers on my “Pay It Forward” post for the letter ‘P,’ I won’t list all of them again but would especially like to bring attention to Alana who operatesWritercize because her blog is like the ultimate cure for writer’s block....and...maybe even slight depression!
Among the new blogs that I discovered and liked enough to follow were Film Sketchr because it focuses on storyboards and concept art from popular movies, Giggle Laugh Cry because it’s such a fun read, It's All Me because the author blogs about his life in such a free, relaxed way, Sand Castles and Snow Forts because each visit is refreshing and Gail M Baughnett - Author because she teaches readers about cool aspects of cultures from different parts of the world such as Japanese phrases and some type of dried Mango and Hawaiian plum powder. I also enjoyed reading the Random Thoughts blog where the author blogs about the ABC's of a Good Friend, which I thought was a clever way for Sharon, the author, to go through letters in the A to Z Challenge.
I must not forget Daily Write where my new-found Twitter buddy Damyanti blogs about writing and reading while also sharing really good short stories that she writes and I also enjoyed readingIt's All Me where the blogger writes about his passion for playing sports and thought provoking topics about life that everyone can relate to such as Youth. There are too many new blogs that I discovered and liked, to name them all in this post, so I'll stop here for now but I do plan on highlighting more of them in my future blog posts throughout the year.
One of the new blog friendships I made that will make this A to Z Challenge more memorable would have to be Beverly from Blue Velvet Vincent and it’s funny how we met. She really helped the re-launch of my King Dong series take off and I later learned that she did not even know about the A to Z challenge until finding my Tweets about our main squeeze, actor Vincent D’Onofrio. She decided to join the A to Z Challenge, even though April had already started.....then the “Surprise” button brought her back to my blog.
I guess she and I were meant to connect since we sorta already met by communicating with each other on Twitter and she even gave me a Stylish Blogger Award, my second blog award that I received during the challenge. Unfortunately, our great times together during the A to Z Challenge did not last very long. A mutual love for the "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" star quickly led to a budding blogging friendship but then a few days ago, she informed me that she has taken down her blog and doesn’t know when she will return.
I thought it was just her blog but then I noticed that she also removed her Twitter profile and other online places that she was involved with although I'm not sure if the sudden hiatus includes the Facebook profile for BLV. I understand that this is just the Internet and we have not been communicating for that long but I miss her already and hope that she returns to blogging, tweeting and being online but in the meantime, I hope that she is okay and I wish her the very best.
I’d like to thank Arlee Bird at Tossing it Out for organizing the A to Z Challenge and for also visiting this blog and commenting on various posts. I also thank all of my fellow bloggers who participated in the challenge and visited my blog and left comments. I’m pretty exclusive and didn’t really care to have many blogging friends when first joining the challenge, especially since I felt like I had enough....I had Glozell and Herman atTerrible Analogies and some fellow freelance writing friends and I figured that’s it...they’re all I need in the world!
I guess I now have to accept the fact that my circle of blogging friends has expanded beyond my expectations and, well, hmmmm...I guess that's not toooooo bad. I like some of the rest of y’all....most of the time! *hehe*
Congratulations to all who completed the A to Z Challenge!
May you continue to blog and read often throughout the year and have fun doing it.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Jeffrey Beesler Tells You What You Oughta Know About the A-Z Challenge
One of the big surprises of the 2011 Blogging from A to Z April Challenge was meeting Jeffrey Beesler from World of the Scribe. From the beginning Jeffrey became such a vocal advocate for the Challenge that we ended up inviting him to co-host with us. He took on the role as co-host with fervor and was a real asset to the 2011 Challenge. We were proud to have him on board with us. In this post he tells us his thoughts on A to Z.
You Oughta Know (An A-Z Challenge Reflections Post Special!)
Arlee Bird of Tossing It Out has requested that next Monday, May 2nd, be a time for participants of the A-Z Challenge to reflect on their experiences throughout of April. Because of something else I already have planned for that day, a huge announcement coming, I’m going to do my reflections post right now, as I find that these are things You Oughta Know.
First of all, I’m glad my fears of the challenge were unfounded in large part. Although it has been hard work going to 30 sites a day and not hardly having any time for anything else, the work has been well worth it. I’ve met so many wonderful new people through the challenge, which was pretty much the whole point of A-Z.
I’m also glad to have friends like Arlee and Alex J Cavanaugh who've taught me a thing or two about courage, and about doing the right thing, by asking me to co-host. I can think of no greater gift these two have bestowed upon me than their friendship during this past month.
Of course, it hasn’t always been candy apples and honeydew melons. I’ve stumbled upon some self-serving sites, bickered with the commenting function of Disqus, had less time for writing, and at one point, the weekend of the letter N, I really felt the strain of doing the challenge.
Now, having pointed out the downsides, I have a few thoughts for A-Z should the challenge return next year.
1. 1. If you sign up to participate, make sure you participate. If this is something you can’t commit to, or are just using to score yourself a few hits without bothering to try, then by all means do not sign up. These blogfests are meant to be fun.
2. 2. Set yourself some realistic goals and expectations. This is a huge step. I’ve run the gamut of comments ranging anywhere from 62 on the letter A to the low of 15 on the letter W. Do not for an instant fool yourself into thinking you’ll score 100 comments with every post. You’ll only set yourself up for disappointment.
3. 3. On the flip side of #2, if you do set goals, make sure you work your posterior off to meet them. I myself have set up the goal of reaching 30 blogs a day until I get to the end of the linky list, which will take me until May 11th or 12th to get through. Fortunately, I only have a little over 400 more blogs left to visit.
And finally, having said the above, I want to point out that I got exactly what I wanted out of the challenge, and even a few things I hadn’t expected, like being interviewed and featured at Wordsinsync. I’ve settled on the goal of doubling my follower count for the A-Z Challenge. On March 31st, the number had been at 200. As of this writing, it’s sitting at 403. I’ve more than exceeded my goal, but that’s because I’ve worked my tail off for it.
So there you have it. My reflections post. I want to thank each and every last one of my new followers for joining me on my writing journey.
Thank you Jeffrey. You are a true blog friend and always helpful. Readers should heed your words here--they were well said.
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