Personal Challenges and Light Bulb Moments (#atozchallenge)

       This guest post comes courtesy of writer/blogger Lissa Johnston.   If you would be interested in contributing your guest post to the A to Z Challenge Blog please contact us. 

Personal Challenges and Light Bulb Moments

2016 is my first year participating in the A to Z Challenge, though not my first blog challenge and definitely not my first writing challenge. I’m familiar with deadline pressure - what writer isn’t? - but the A to Z presented a couple of different types of pressure, for different reasons. As I progressed through the challenge, and even afterward, my opinions on some blog-related issues have been swinging back and forth like a West Texas weather vane, to wit:

To Theme Or Not To Theme

When I started the challenge, I didn’t realize what was going on with the ‘theme’. I thought ‘A to Z’ was the theme. Once I figured it out, I thought, Whew! So glad theme is optional. Themes are stupid. Themes tie me down and restrict my writing. I’ll write whatever the heck I feel like. And of course after the hundredth random theme-less blog I visited, I was so thankful to stumble across blogs that had such narrowly focused themes I marveled in their ability to find 6 topics to write about, much less 26. I became a believer. Themes are the bomb. Themes are like fences. They may seem restrictive and unsightly, but in addition to keeping good things in, they also keep bad things out.

Categories and Comments

After the challenge concluded, we were encouraged to post a recap of our experiences. Of 1300+ bloggers who completed most of the challenge, less than a third shared a recap. Still, that’s over 300 opinions, and I’ve worked my way through nearly half.

Two areas were mentioned repeatedly: requests for tweaks to the blog category codes; and hand-wringing over the low percentage of participants who visited and commented at other blogs. My flip-flop on these two issues is intertwined.

First, to the categories: When we registered for the challenge, we were asked to describe our blogs using a two-letter code. The idea was to give other bloggers some idea of what your blog was about before they clicked. Many participants thought there should be more categories added. Some also suggested they should describe the theme, rather than the blog, since the two could vary wildly. My initial reaction to the category idea was, Categories? I don’t need no stinking categories! I assigned myself one. But I basically ignored other people’s blog categories because I wanted to visit ALL of them, regardless of topic.I will also admit my initial reaction to blogs being categorized is that it had the potential to hurt some blogs that might be at a disadvantage if ghetto-ized into a category with a very small niche.  

Secondly, the comments: Some participants said they didn’t leave comments because they couldn’t think of anything to say. And I’m like, What? Most bloggers are writers, for crying out loud. Surely you can come up with 10 words on the fly, like that old Toastmasters improv exercise. If you can’t come up with a few words for a token comment, blog comments are the least of your worries.

That’s how I felt about categories and comments - until I had my light bulb moment.

I’ve been listening to several writing podcasts recently. One in particular really solved a problem I’ve been having with a current WIP. I couldn’t wait to get to the keyboard and type up a comment. And that’s when I realized: If I’m not that excited about every comment I leave, I shouldn’t be leaving it. I shouldn’t be wasting my time on meaningless ‘hey, just dropping by from the A to Z’ comments in a likely fruitless attempt to increase my page rank.

After my light bulb moment, I now understand why people want the categories to be clear, unambiguous, and definitive of both blog and theme if possible.The bloggers who are asking for this have already had the light bulb moment. They know what they are interested in and where they will have the best chance of finding blogs they will want to comment on organically. Otherwise, they’re wasting their time as well as yours.

I like to think I have an open mind. I’m willing to change my opinion when I’m wrong, especially when learning through personal experience. The 2016 A to Z Challenge was full of those experiences for me. What were some of your light bulb moments this year?

Lissa Johnston is a writer. Her latest book, The Dala Horse, is a middle grade adventure available now at Amazon. She blogs at www.lissajohnston.com.

Lissa Johnston Writer  www.lissajohnston.com

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Time for the 2016 A to Z Post Challenge Road Trip

Are YOU ready to cruise through the 2016 A-Z Challenge list?  If you're like most of us, you didn't make the total rounds during April.  Now's your chance to catch up to some of the great bloggers who posted during the 7th annual Blogging from A to Z April Challenge.  And the good news is that we've got the rest of this year to do our road trippin'.

Thanks to the late great Tina Downey at Life is Good and Shannon Lawrence at The Warrior Muse who started the Road Trip (formerly known as the Post-Challenge Challenge) -- by calling on each other to visit all of the blogs on the list before the next A-Z Challenge rolled around -- we now have this year-round event to stay active in the blogosphere during the "off-season."

Now I invite you to join us on the 6th annual Post-Challenge Road Trip, a meandering journey through the 2016 list of A-Z participants, at your own pace, with your own rules, and very few expectations.

The most important thing to keep in mind is you're the boss of you're own schedule and approach to visiting blogs. Whether you want to visit one new blog on a daily basis or hundreds of blogs per day, you're the one at the wheel. The Road Trip is really just some buddies in the blogging community hanging out and visiting new voices in the A-Z world.

A few strategies that may have worked for Road Trippers include...

• Visiting all the blogs with similar topics or categories as yours
• Visiting all the blogs whose names make you curious
• Visiting all the blogs at even (or odd) numbers on the list
• Start from where you left off and keep on truckin'...
• Visiting blogs that are low (or high, or in the middle) on the list
• Visiting blogs randomly by just clicking on titles located in different areas of the list

Whatever you do, remember that signing up on the linky doesn't mean you're committed to visiting ALL of the blogs on the list. Coming along with us on this Road Trip just indicates that you're not done yet and would like to show your fellow A-Z participants some visiting and commenting love. These are among the things that keep a blogging community strong.  In your blog travels, if you run across any bad links on the list please let us know (contact info at tab)--we've tried cleaning up the list, but there still may be some bad links in there.

Who's with us for the 2016 Post-Challenge Road Trip?  Sign up below!

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I'm Not a Blogger (an #atozchallenge story)

Today we welcome 2016 A to Z Challenge survivor author Martin Reaves with some thoughts on "not blogging" and his A to Z experience. 

I’m not a blogger

.

Seriously, I’m not.

Odd that my words should continue to unspool before your eyes, isn’t it?

Well, they did the same under my fingers, and have done so for years now.

I keep telling myself I’m not a blogger, I don’t grasp the format, I don’t understand why anyone would want to hear (read) what I have to say.

So I write novels. Blame my characters if you get bored; after all, they told me what they wanted to say.

Books and stories, that the ticket. Not blogs.

No juicy rants about politics or—Heaven help us—religion.

But…

Ah yes, but.

Detractors be damned, blogging IS writing. It is the brain (or the Muse, or what have you) speaking through the fingers to an unknown and faceless someone. My stories generally start with a bare notion, a fleeting nudge of feeling that there might be a story if I start writing RIGHT NOW and don’t stop until that nebulous nudge is through with me.

Blogging is no different. Screw outlines, all I need is an opening sentence. Something to move the cursor forward.

Wanna know what the sentence was for this post? Wanna know exactly what it was that sent my fingers scampering over the keys?

Ready?

Here it is: “I’m not a blogger.”

I sat here, wondering what on earth I had to say to my fellow A to Z’ers. I scanned several other A to Z posts, saw the crafty lists, and thoroughly enjoyed those breezy, enchanting posts.

And I thought to myself: But I’m not a blogger. My blog posts generally have to do with my writing; my current work-in-progress; my ongoing review blog concerning movies about writers.

I’ve been not blogging for years now. And the more I don’t do it, the more natural it seems.

Exactly why did I start not blogging in the first place? Well, looky here…a list (albeit a very short one) emerges.


Why Martin Doesn’t Blog


1) To Keep From Writing. Think blogging is tough? Try writing novels. Sometimes the words thumb their collective noses at you and decide they’d rather not play right now. I find in those dark times that I can always write some random sentence (“I’m not a blogger,” for instance) and keep going stream-of-consciousness-style until something takes shape. Not blogging was my favorite way of not writing.

1b) Because It’s Easy. Wait…what?

Yeah, there’s the truth within the lie…or vice versa. Because the truth (or the lie) is that I should be writing every day. But sometimes I don’t feel like it. But I can always write something if I give it structure ahead of time. Hold on, didn’t he just say he likes to start with a sentence to see where it goes?

Indeed. But that only works once in a while. Try that on a regular basis and the result would be a chorus of irritated yawns. This is where the A to Z Challenge came into play. 26 posts; scheduled; clockwork. This was terrifying until I came up with my format. Make it short. Hell, make it Haiku. Honestly, I don’t know why that was easy, but it was.

2) To Figure Things Out. Some ideas are not meant to be stories. Some are not actually ideas at all, but random musings. Ruminations, if you will. Occasionally I attempt to come to terms with some horrific crap I perpetrated years ago. I have channeled that confusion and self-loathing into any number of stories (see Relative Karma and Relative Sanity), but there came one of those Dark Nights of the Soul when I imagined the Other Me as a beast that I kept chained. To learn from him; to study him and make sure he never got out again. I began to realize this Darker Me, hunched and drooling in a dark corner of my muse’s basement, was fueling my writing. That post became Chaining the Beast in the Basement of the Muse. Check it out HERE.

3) Because I Love Writing and Writers. I am endlessly fascinated with the mechanics of writing and the processes of those who do it well. I never get bored reading what writers have to say about the craft. And I am a bit giddy when I stumble on a movie that has something to say about the writing life.

So I began compiling a list of movies that deal with writers/writing/the writing life. And I began watching these movies and offering my opinion in review form as to how Hollywood treated those hacks and scribblers. I entitled the series Scribblers on Celluloid and if you haven’t had enough yet, feel free to check out the introduction HERE.

What is the point in all this? It would seem to be a simple admonition to find out what it is you are not doing at which you are half competent.

And then, regardless of what the haters may say, continue not doing that thing with a passion.

I am not a blogger, and I intend to keep it that way.


For more from this author, visit Martin’s website by clicking HERE.

Visit Martin’s Amazon page by clicking HERE.

      If you'd like to contribute a guest post to the A to Z Blog please let us know and we can discuss your idea.