Calling All Roadtrippers! Pit Stop Time!

Hey Roadtrippers! Calling you all in for a pit-stop. I don't know where you are on Route 66, but let's all meet here at the A-Z for a little chat about how our journeys are going.

I'm still chugging along, though not at nearly the pace I first started with. Then I was hitting 7-8 new blogs a day, out there meeting and greeting a socializing. Then I started to miss some of my old blogging buddies, and decided that I needed my friends, and the adventure at the same time. This choice did slow me down...

For me it was a good choice though, because some of these buddies were new ones, and it's not good to disappear at the beginning of a friendship! Those relationships have grown, and they feel like old friends now.

What I'm really loving is taking the Reflections part of Route 66 first. That way I know that the person I'm visiting took the Challenge seriously, probably finished, and had something to say about it. I've found some truly excellent examples, and some of those bloggers have agreed to share their Reflections here. You may have read some of them.

I've read gaming blogs, music blogs, atheist blogs, journal blogs, cooking blogs, craft blogs that make me envious of their enormous patience and talent, I've learned some new scrapbooking techniques (not that I'll ever have time for that in my life again, I'm predicting), I've seen other countries, experienced other cultures, read some amazing poetry, bought WAAAY too many books on my Kindle, just like last year, and met some incredible people. It's a blast! I'm going to just keep swimming, just keep swimming!

Please share some of the highlights of your journey in the comments!

~Tina

Kriti: Curing Writer's Block one Rhyme at a Time

Please welcome Kriti to the A-Z today! She hails from India and is an engineer and a photographer, and has THREE blogs. I want her time management skills...

Hola people!

Accompanying the Friday bliss, this is Kriti Bhatnagar, back in the game with all my chaos! Just for a better case study…across the web I can usually be located on my blogs Just a little time , Bumps and Bruises and Alpha and Omega unless it’s raining or I’m into some abrupt kind of surfing or busy stalking the profile of my blogger friend I’m having a crush on :P

Firstly, I’d like to thank Sir Arlee Bird whole heartedly for providing me with this fabulous opportunity ‘Blogging from A to Z Challenge’! It occurred as the most rough, adventurous (because of some stupid things I did to get some fine ideas! :P) and super fun experience for April 2013 and if you ask it’s candid description according to my views…it was a Ninja Act for me! Not because it was quite a commitment but because I dived into it off the cuff. Each night I fell asleep with hundreds of thoughts, about the supposedly next post I needed to write, haunting my mind and the next day I woke up just to pen down a sufficiently alien thought…it was kind of a repeated blackout each day for 30 days…ummm…29 actually! The ‘Z’ post I had prepared in advance…it consisted of a kind of tribute to Sir Arlee Bird which later got published in Woven Tale Press…I felt really glad as it got a position next to the introduction of the very host! Felt like all my endeavors amidst that dust and sweat paid off…thanks to Sandra Tyler, Editor, Woven Tale Press, for that!

The thought that stalked my mind at usual punctuations was…the writer’s block! :P The experience and pain, I felt like rhyming up it all! Life seems bit lively when you introduce a tinge of rhyme to it…I think! :)

Writer’s…umm…block!

So…here it comes again…the famous writer’s block!

A drink might help…a shower or maybe a distant walk…

I thought I’d go with the walk…try out the new shoes I just bought…

Some flora and fauna around…I might get some new thought…

But I came back with the same head…wherein there was nothing right…

And my new shoes…don’t ask about them…like hell did they bite…

Worked out on substitutes…the first, the second, the third…

And tried out every word with my vision all blurred…

I tried to make them fly like a free bird…

Got stuck…helplessly…surrendered to the Crossword…

Choked with it all…as I tried sipping on my Ice tea with a straw…

I tried to replace the words…instead, they all formed a Jigsaw… 

They never got straight…struggling I felt as a groove… 

Didn’t stop…kept turning and twisting them like a Rubikks cube move…

I tried and tried and tried to think…

They seem more or less like some Cubin link…

I had to get it done…so applied all my wit…

And in the end…guess who won…

Somehow I got rid of it…

Somehow I got it all done!

***

This is from me as for now! Keep blogging…it refines a soul in the best possible way :)

To express it all is so not a crime

Just try to introduce a little bit of rhyme

Put your faiths and sorrows in a fine string of words

Let your thoughts fly, in this open sky, like free birds

Love and Regards

~Kriti~

About the Author: Kriti is an Artist as well as an Engineer hailing from India. She can eat, she can sleep and she can write!

Thanks for sharing your tips with us, and congrats on making it to Woven Tale Press!

Suzy Turner: My Blogging Journey and FREE Book Giveaway!

I first started blogging on Monday September 22, 2008. It seems like such a long time ago now doesn't it? My first blog was entitled Iberian Bird and it was about my life as a British woman living in the south of Portugal. I moved here when I was ten years old and have now been here for 27 years. Hubby and I came very close to moving back to England recently, we had our house on the market, and then we realised that, actually, we've got a pretty good life here. So we decided not to give it up. But I digress.

Blogging. After almost exactly two years of posting about Algarvean life on Iberian Bird, I created a brand new blog. It was very uniquely and originally entitled... Suzy Turner (!). It was to become my author blog. You see, at around that time I was also busy writing my first YA book, Raven (I've since written five more).

So I said farewell to Iberian Bird and hello to Suzy Turner and I haven't looked back since.

Speaking of looking back, as I was writing this I decided to check out some of my original posts - what a blast from the past! Surprisingly, most of my early posts had little to do with writing. Instead they were about my general life in Portugal - visits to Lisbon, a fashion show where I was the guest of honour (I use to be a magazine editor), posts about the real me, etc. I recommend reading back over your blog, it's actually quite entertaining as well as being somewhat therapeutic!

More recently though, my blog has been all about writing. Whether it be about my books or other people's, there are tonnes of interviews, guest posts, giveaways, and more. But it's made me realise that it's nice to sometimes have more personal posts in there. To give the reader a glimpse of my life here. Funny isn't it, how doing one thing like writing a guest post for A to Z has allowed me to see the bigger picture?

Currently, three of Suzy's books are FREE:

Raven

Daisy Madigan's Paradise

The Ghost of Josiah Grimshaw

Find Suzy:

Blog

Website

Facebook

Twitter

Wow, Suzy! Thanks for offering your books for free! Bonus! It was nice to hear about your blogging journey, too. Thanks for being here!

~Tina